


Safe Haven

by marvel_and_mischief



Category: Pedro Pascal Fandom, The Great Wall (2017)
Genre: Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Heterosexual Sex, Minor Violence, Smut, Threats of Violence, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:15:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 38,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26082535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marvel_and_mischief/pseuds/marvel_and_mischief
Summary: You are the owner of a tavern in England when a mysterious stranger asks to stay in your lodgings whilst he works for the Lord of the town you live in. Soft, awkward, grumpy Pero!
Relationships: Pero Tovar/Reader, Pero Tovar/You
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35





	1. Part I

When you thought about the past eleven months, you couldn’t believe you had gotten this far. You had three wonderful, hard working women under your care. Gwen kept to herself in the kitchens, baking meat pies for your customers and keeping the tavern clean and tidy. Darcy could talk the back legs off a donkey if given the chance, but her charm kept the customers coming back and those passing through remembered to come back the next time they were near town. And Adelaide, or Addy as she was known, helped you with the business; counting money, keeping on top of the food and drink that was needed, finding new ways to attract guests to the lodgings out back. 

When your father had suddenly come down with a fever, you were certain it would pass. The cold, damp nights had started to settle in, so it wasn’t unusual to hear of the townspeople getting ill. You sat by his bedside in the day, feeding him soup and reassuring him that the tavern would be just as he left it when he returned to work. And at night you opened up as usual, serving the locals who had come in for the warm fire and mead. You only had Gwen back then, so you were rushed off your feet without your father as well. When not even a week later your father had taken a turn for the worse, you couldn’t deny that maybe this new way of running the tavern would be a more permanent way of life. 

The fever took your father five days after he fell ill. You worked harder than you ever thought you would have to. You not only had to quickly learn how to be a business owner, but being a woman you had to earn the respect of the townspeople. They all knew you, having grown up in the tavern as your father’s only child. The town healer helped your mother give birth to you, as a small child you brought bread from the baker, you courted the blacksmiths son as a teenager. But as a businesswoman, they were a little more concerned. The regulars that came into the tavern most nights had your back, but some of the older members of the town thought you couldn’t handle it. Some even suggested they would only support you if you found yourself a husband. 

After two months, you had found your newest employee. Darcy stumbled into the tavern just as you were closing up one night, mud caking her hands and most of her dress. You brought her inside, sitting her in front of the large fire on one side of the tavern. You asked Gwen to make up a tankard of warm milk and honey and handed it to this stranger. You convinced her that if she just trusted you, allowed you to keep her safe in the tavern, you would never ask where she came from or who she was running from, and she would always have a home here. She had nowhere else to go and she had had no better offers than yours and doubted anyone else would be so kind. She agreed to work for you. 

After a few weeks Darcy opened up a little more. She had travelled from Armagh in Ireland, looking for a new life away from a family that wished to marry her off to a brute of a man. She would rather have died journeying out of Ireland than be made to live the rest of her life with him. Her sweet Irish accent hypnotised anyone who heard her speak, so custom quickly picked up and so did her confidence.   
Soon after that was your last employee. Addy was mild tempered, still is, when you found her covered in blankets and huddled against a stone wall in the marketplace. Her large brown eyes were flitting back and forth, her hands shaking where they clung to her only bag of belongings. The first time you tried to walk up to her she hid under the blankets and started crying. You left her an apple and a chunk of bread, not wanting to spook her any more than you already had. 

The next day you went back to where you had last seen her but she was gone. She had moved to the opposite side of the marketplace and was trying to hold onto her bag which was being torn away from her by a boy no older than twelve. You had rushed over to her, yanking the bag from the boy and pulling yourself up to your full height to tower over him. With a gasp the boy ran off and you turned to see Addy with her eyes down, biting her bottom lip. After assuring her you only wanted to help, you handed her the bag and brought her back to the tavern.   
Once she was comfortable with you, you realised she was literate and could help with the day-to-day running of the tavern. She was born in France but spoke very good English. She has never told you why she ended up in England but it didn’t matter. She was kind and thoughtful and worked harder than any man you’d ever met. 

Once you had your team set up everything felt like it once had. People respected your position, they supported the tavern and your guest rooms were never empty. 

Your day dreaming was disturbed by Darcy slamming a tankard on the counter in front of you. You raised an eyebrow in her direction, silently asking why she did that.

“There’s a new man in town,” she stated matter-of-factly. It wasn’t unusual for travellers to pass through. The river that ran through the town lead a few miles east to the sea that separated England and France. Anyone travelling from Europe would most likely have to come through your town to reach the rest of the country. So why was Darcy making such a big deal about this one man?

“Does he practice sorcery or something just as interesting?” You asked with a smirk. Darcy came from a country steeped in superstition so you knew that would hit a particular spot.

Darcy made the sign of the cross against her chest and gave you a warning look. “Do not jest. Of course not. But everyone’s talking about him. He barely says a word to anyone. Has an accent apparently-“

“How do they know he has an accent if he doesn’t speak?”

Darcy seems to think this over. The difference between Darcy and Addy is, where Addy is educated, Darcy is smart when is comes to the realities of life. She knows to keep to the clear roads and not walk through the woods when travelling to market, but she doesn’t always understand irony. 

“Well… I’m not sure. He must have spoken at some point. You can’t just not speak!” She was getting flustered which made you giggle. Darcy realised what you were doing and grabbed the towel that had been hanging over her shoulder and whipped it in your direction, catching you on the elbow where your arms were folded. 

“Alright alright! I’m sorry. What is it they are saying about him?”

“Just that he’s a little strange. And he has a large scar over his eye.” She shrugged and began to use the towel to wipe dust off the counter. 

“A mercenary perhaps?” You had met mercenaries before. They weren’t common but they were all the same. Kept themselves to themselves and never stayed anywhere long enough to make friends. 

“Do you think he will cause trouble?” Darcy was purposefully not looking in your direction. She was worried. Trouble meant fighting and none of the girls were comfortable with dealing with that. 

“No,” you said sternly. You glanced down to the thick sharpened branch you hid behind the counter. You would nip it in the bud before any fighting started. You wouldn’t have the girls frightened to live here. This was supposed to be their safe space. “If I think he’s going to cause a problem I will kick him out. He may not even come in here Darcy.” You spoke softly, not wanting to spook her. 

She seemed satisfied with that answer when she walked away to clean the table tops. You watched as she began to hum a tune as though the previous conversation had never happened.

“I’m going to check that Gwen is ready to open up for the night,” and with that you left in the direction of the kitchen, putting this stranger to the back of your mind. 

-

You had opened up in the early evening, just as the sun was beginning to set. The night had been busy but not chaotic. Gwen managed to sell all but one of her pies so the three women were sat around the kitchen table tucking in. The last of the drinkers were stumbling out of the front door. You bid them a safe journey home when you noticed a man walking towards you. The lights from the tavern weren’t strong enough to catch any details until he was right in front of you.

He wore a black cape, hood up against the bitter air, and the unmistakable line of a sheathed sword could be seen poking through the material. He carried a bag over his shoulder and nothing else. You looked up as he took a step closer and candlelight showed you the scar of the man Darcy had been talking about earlier that evening. 

You stood up straighter, head held high. You were not going to be intimidated by this man and the permanent scowl that seemed to be etched onto his features. His facial expression didn’t change even as he spoke.

“Do you have rooms?” Darcy was right, there was an accent. But it didn’t sound like Addy’s French accent. You had had men pass through from further afield, but some didn’t speak English at all so you couldn’t ask where they came from. 

“My rooms are full.” You didn’t mean to be blunt but that’s how it came out. You weren’t lying, your earliest vacancy was in two days time but you still felt bad. This man must have walked all the way from where his ship had docked, and he hadn’t brought a horse with him. He was about to turn away when you shouted out to him. 

“I have a stable.” It was the only solution you could think of. He didn’t turn to look at you but you heard him grumble something in his native tongue. You didn’t think you wanted to know what it translated to. “It’s enclosed. With the door shut it’s quite warm. Only one horse in there at the moment too.” 

He finally turned to look at you. He raised one eyebrow rather high, and you thought if he just stopped scowling he may be handsome. So you gave him a small smile. He hadn’t done anything to offend you, yet, so the least you could do was be polite. 

“Where can I find more rooms, _camarera_?” His voice was deep and his accent was strong, and you don’t know what he had called you but he sounded tired. And maybe you were too kind for your own good but you didn’t want him travelling longer than he had to when there were perfectly fine stacks of hay he could sleep on for a few hours.

“You would have to travel north into town. On foot, you could reach it by sunrise.” He seemed to be mulling it over. Was he serious? He’ll drop down in exhaustion before he’d even travelled halfway. “Come into the stable. I won’t charge you anything.” 

That seemed to make up his mind because he was walking back towards you. You stepped inside to let him in before locking the door. You took him through a side door, down the side of the building and into the stables. 

It wasn’t large. Could fit three horses in at a squeeze, but the current resident was lying against the large doors and on the other side against the stone wall of the guest rooms were stacks of hay. 

The horse raised his head and let out a huff of disapproval when you both walked past him, but soon became disinterested when neither of you paid him no attention. 

The stranger sat on a stack of hay, moving about to test how comfortable it was. He looked up and nodded when he was satisfied. There was an awkward silence for a moment before you remembered that this was your tavern and you shouldn’t be feeling nervous.

“Did you want a blanket?”

“No thank you.”

“Something to eat or drink?”

“No.” He cleared his throat and looked away. “Thank you.”

You nodded and turned away to leave him alone. When you got to the door you had entered through you saw he was still sat exactly where he was. He hadn’t moved in the slightest. Was he not used to anyone being nice to him? Or was he just an awkward, angry man? 

Closing the door behind you, you let out a breath you didn’t know you had been holding. You began to walk along the corridor, taking a turn to arrive in the kitchen.

The women had devoured the pie that had been left. Gwen was nearly falling asleep at the table whilst Addy had taken over the washing up duties. Darcy was nowhere to be found. 

Addy saw you first, holding up a finger to the ceiling when she noticed you were looking around the kitchen.

“Darcy went to bed. Are you going up?”

For the first time that night you realised just how tired you were. You didn’t know whether to tell them about the man in the stables. Maybe it was for best that Darcy was already in bed. She would be none the wiser. 

“I just need to stub the candles out in the front. I’ve let a traveller stay in the stables. Don’t disturb him. I imagine he will be gone by morning.”

Addy frowned. It wasn’t unusual to let the odd person stay in the stables. Usually poor travellers looking for work, or like tonight when you were feeling especially kind. But maybe your tone inflicted that it was unusual with this man because she looked like she was waiting for you to explain.

You refused. You grabbed some pie crumbs off the plate and shoved them into your mouth.

“Alright. I’ll stub the candles out if you wanted to go on up? I’ve nearly finished here.” She grabbed the empty plate you had just eaten off of and dumped it in the bowl of water. 

You made your way towards your room, hopefully to get some sleep and forget about the man in the stables. You don’t know why he was bothering you so much. You were acting like he was a dirty little secret. He’ll be gone in the morning and you will never see him again.

You sort of hoped you were wrong.

-

The morning started as it always did. The birds singing and the Winter sun shone through my window. 

Your room was modest. The bigger of the three bedrooms upstairs (it was formerly your fathers room). You had it all to yourself, whereas Addy and Darcy shared a room and Gwen had the smallest room furthest from yours. You had a small wooden table next to your bed which sat a candle and a ribbon for your long hair. 

Across from your bed, underneath the window, was a box to store your clothes in and along the wall on the left of the room was a tin bath, the only one upstairs. 

You were lucky, you knew that. Working in a tavern brought in more money than the average business in town. But with four mouths to feed you didn’t have a lot of money for long.

You were rubbing the sleep from your eyes when the memories of the previous night came rushing back to you. you remembered the strange man with the scar that intrigued you. The deep, husky voice, the grumpy look on his face, his curt responses. 

You should be hoping that he’s long gone but as you jumped out of bed, quickly throwing your outer dress over your underdress and slipping on your boots you realised you were hoping for the exact opposite. You ran down the stairs, rushed through the hallway and arrived at the kitchen to see Gwen at the stove.

You couldn’t help but notice the smell of warm milk and honey in the air. You grabbed a tankard off the side and dipped it into the pan that Gwen was mixing. 

“Sorry Gwen,” you muttered. You knew she’d be annoyed for the rest of the day but you’d find a way to make it up to her. You always did. 

The short walk to the stables had your heart pumping. You suddenly felt stupid. He probably wasn’t in there anymore. And what if he didn’t like honey? And why did you care so much? 

When you opened the door you almost bumped into him. You gasped as he jumped back, hand immediately reaching the hilt of his sword. 

The hood of his cape wasn’t up so you could see his face much more clearly this morning. He had a peculiarly large nose which you found yourself wanting to run your finger along, and an unusual moustache that you never saw on Englishmen. He was staring at you, mouth slightly parted when you realised you had also been staring at him for longer than was acceptable. 

You caught your breath and decided to show him the contents of the tankard.

“Warm milk with honey. Thought you might want something before you left?” You said hopefully. He was inspecting the contents as though he had never been presented with something before. It was as though he didn’t know how to respond. “You don’t have to. Just thought after a cold night, something warm would be welcome,” you shrugged and started to take it back. But he stopped you with a gloved hand over yours.

He took the drink off of you and began to sip at it. He didn’t make a face of disgust so you assumed he liked it. You were desperate to know where he was going but you didn’t want to intrude. Luckily you didn’t have to.

“Thank you, that is nice. I have to go. Work in town.” His words were to the point. Not like yours were when you rambled like a mad woman. You nodded and took back the drink he was handing back to you. 

“Good luck. I hope everything goes well for you.” You smiled, and it looked like he was going to smile back but he nodded instead.

“Thank you. For the bed.” And with that he brushed past you. You knew Addy would be at the front of the tavern to let him out so you didn’t follow. You also didn’t want to make more of a fool of yourself than you already had. 

You sighed and trudged back towards the kitchen. You had some making up to do.


	2. Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pero needs a place to stay. Again.

After helping Gwen with the making of the pastry (she was very thankful after you dipped into her warm milk this morning), you went in search of Addy. She helped you most days to keep record of anything you needed to buy from market. She was good at record keeping and counting money; without her you would have to do all of that on your own. 

You found her sat at a table in the front of the tavern. All of the tables had been cleaned and the floor swept, so Darcy must have been in and out whilst you were in the kitchen. 

You sat across from Addy who didn’t look up from counting the two small pouches of money on the table in front of her. You crossed your legs and waited until she was ready. You didn’t want to disturb her but you needed to know everything was in order before you thought about walking to market. It was already mid-morning and you didn’t want to lose out on the best meats and cheeses for the guests’ meals. 

Addy finally looked up at you with a content sigh, pulling the ties on the pouches taut and tying a knot on each. 

“We are up twelve pennies from the night before. That’s good!” She announces with an infectious smile. She sits back in her chair and crosses her arms before speaking again. “So who was that angry looking man I let out the front door this morning?”

You should have guessed she would ask. Addy was timid by nature. You would never see her speak so boldly in front of anyone she wasn’t comfortable with. But with you? She was too cheeky for her own good sometimes.

You tilted your head, feigning confusion “Must have been a guest.”

“Non, mon amie,” she shook her head from side to side, her smile growing to a smirk. “Guests use the guest door. He came through here and used the front door.”

“Yes. He did,” you sighed in defeat. It’s not as though anything happened. He was just a stranger you felt inclined to help. It’s silly of you to make something out of nothing. But you felt almost embarrassed that whenever you thought of him or he was spoken of, your heart gave a little skip. “He turned up just as I was closing the door last night. He had nowhere else to go so I said he could stay in the stable. That is all.” You shrugged and began to stand up when Addy put a hand on your arm. You saw concern in her eyes. You didn’t understand why until she spoke.

“You must be careful. He could have hurt you. Or any of us.”

You gave her a reassuring smile and placed your other hand on top of hers that was still holding onto your arm. 

“We have people stay here all the time-“

“In the guest house. Where they can’t get to any of our rooms-“

“If I thought he couldn’t be trusted I would never have offered him the stables. It was one night and we will never see him again,” you calmly insisted. 

“I know,” she began, “I trust you, obviously. I still worry.” She was frowning and chewing on her bottom lip, a habit you noticed she did whenever she was overthinking. If you thought you were protective over all three women, then she was more so. Her mother hen nature was admirable, but unnecessarily cautious sometimes. 

For a moment you saw the frightened, shell of a woman you found in the marketplace months ago. She has never said what, or who, she was fleeing from but you knew now this has something to do with that.

“Does he remind you of someone…?” You slowly asked. You didn’t want to pry, but maybe the stranger you let in last night brought back memories of someone else in Addy’s mind. 

Her head shot up and you knew you were right. “I’m sorry Addy. He’s gone now-“

“Oui, he has gone. I’m sure he was… nice.” And with that the new Addy was back. The one whose shoulders were a little more relaxed, who had a twinkle of mischief in her eyes. Albeit her smile was more forced than it usually is as she tried to move on from the conversation. But you preferred this Addy to the previous woman. 

You finally stood up and swept passed her, but not before softly poking her nose. She guffawed and slapped your hand away. 

“Do we need to go to market today?” You asked as you walked behind the countertop. You ran your fingertips lightly over your sharpened branch and surveyed the tankards. Gwen always cleaned them well but it’s a habit of yours to check over everything, just incase. 

“We don’t have to. You and Gwen could go tomorrow instead,” Addy replies over her shoulder. 

Just as you were about to agree, there was a pounding on the main front door. Addy looked to you and stood up, about to make her way over to the door.

“I’ll get it,” you insisted as you walked out from behind the door. “Take the money away,” you pointed to the pouches still on the table. It was probably some traveller asking about rooms. You still had none available which sometimes lead to a disturbance. 

You pulled across the bolts and opened the door just enough so your face could be seen but nothing else. It was then that you realised this wasn’t a traveller, but someone much worse.

“Taxman,” you grumbled. You looked him up and down. He was shorter than you, dressed all in black as though he were attending a burial. His eyes were small and beady but still felt like they were staring into your soul. His beard tried but failed to hide the blackened crooked teeth of a man who cared nothing about how he presented himself. 

You turned back to where Addy was about to leave and put a hand up to stop her. She rolled her eyes and placed the pouches on the countertop. 

“Please come in,” you said with a fake smile. You stepped to the side to let him pass and as he did so you had to hold your breath against the stench of manure. You guessed his previous visit did not go well. Addy noticed the look of disgust on your face and reacted accordingly; she quickly took a pouch of money and threw it towards the taxman who, to be fair to him, caught it one handed. This way he stayed a few feet away from Addy who didn’t have to smell what you just had to. 

“And the other one.” Smell forgotten, you looked at the taxman in confusion. He was pointing to the second pouch of money still sitting on the countertop. 

“I’m sorry? The usual amount is in there,” you stated as calmly as you could. You could see out of the corner of your eye that Addy was starting to panic. 

“The price has gone up. I have heard your guest rooms are never empty.”

“Yes but-“

“No buts! This is what happens when you work as hard as you do. You bring in more custom and therefore more money goes to the Lord.” He paused. “Did your late father not tell you this?” There was a smirk on his face that was unkind, cruel almost. His matter-of-fact tone was grating on you and he knew it as soon as he noticed your fists clenching. You would not give him the satisfaction of losing your temper however.

“I need the second pouch to buy more food and mead, otherwise no one will spend their hard earned money in my tavern,” you responded as calmly as you could. You took a deep breath and hoped to a God that probably wasn’t listening that this man would be understandable. 

He began to slowly nod his head and took small strides to stand directly in front of you. You held your breath.

“I understand,” he said mockingly. “But I also have to collect more money.” He pretended to think over the situation before settling on a solution. “How about I give you until the end of the week? Get me my money by Friday and we won’t have a problem.” 

You wanted to very much disagree. You wanted to poke his stupid little eyes out and feed them to his children, though you doubted, and hoped for their sakes, that he had none. You looked over to Addy who was gripping onto the second pouch of money like her life depended on it. And it did. All of your lives depended on that money to keep the tavern going. So you did what you had to. You nodded once, and that seemed to satisfy the pig in front of you.

“Great. I am so glad we could come to an arrangement.” He had the audacity to huff a laugh in your face mockingly before he stepped around you and left through the front door. 

You let out the breath you had been holding. Your first priority was Addy whose face was flustered pink and eyes clenched shut to stop from crying. You walked over and wrapped your arms around her shoulders, rocking her from side to side. 

“It is nothing to worry yourself over Addy,” you assured her. Although you think you were trying to assure yourself more than her. 

-

The most immediate action you could think to take would be to raise the prices on the rooms and the food. So you enlisted the help of Darcy and Addy to change the signs outside the front of the tavern. The townspeople were generally understandable. They all knew what it was like to deal with the taxman. 

One of the guests was displeased when you told him the news of the new price he would have to pay, demanding that if he wasn’t allowed to continue paying the original price then he would find custom elsewhere. In your annoyance, you helped him pack his bags. 

Which meant one room was available. One room that wasn’t being paid for. On a normal day you wouldn’t think anything of it. Someone always needs a room, even if it’s only for one night. But with the need for money, that was one more mouth that wasn’t buying your food or spending money on mead when you opened the tavern this evening. 

You looked over to the two girls working on a bench outside. Darcy was scrubbing a board clean of chalk whilst Addy was writing the new price on another board. Most people who came through the town could not read but many understood small numbers. And those that had been given the learning to read, had the money, which benefitted you. 

You looked over to the small buildings opposite. Most of the businesses could be found on the other side of the river in the marketplace. But here on the outskirts of town, you had the fisherman, a couple of bakers and their wives and the farmer who you got your milk off every morning before he set off to market. The tavern stuck out in amongst the other’s. It had belonged to your father’s father and was used as the family home before he turned it into a tavern. Then when he died, your father built the guest lodgings himself, having noticed the amount of travellers that passed through in the night that would have to carry on into the market town only to be disappointed that the taverns had taken in as many as they could. 

And now all of that was at risk. You couldn’t help but feel that it was your fault. Of course it wasn’t. And the women would insist you were being hard on yourself. But you felt so much responsibility. The thought of your father and his father watching over you and seeing you lose the tavern not even a year after taking it on. And to the three women under your care, you were the only one they had to look after them. Without the tavern they would be back to where they were before they found you; running, hiding, scared with nothing to their name, none of the respect they have gained working for you. 

You were in your thoughts so much you missed Addy clearing her throat to try and catch your attention. You didn’t know what was happening until you felt soft fingertips tapping your arm. 

You almost choked on your own spit when you saw it was the man from the night before. You were so shocked you didn’t think to school your features into something normal and instead your face lit up and made it very obvious that you were pleased to see him. You saw he was wearing the same cloak as before but you caught a glimpse of metal on his front. Some kind of armour perhaps?

“You.” Was the only thing you could think to say. You wanted to slap yourself in the face. You were not risking a glance to the two women to your right. If you did you would see Darcy grinning like a silly child and Addy trying to hide herself behind the wooden board she was working on. 

“Me.” He replied after a beat. You took a deep breath to try again. Maybe this time you could attempt a normal response. 

“I did not catch your name last night.” _That was better,_ you thought rather proudly. His eyes were less hooded, more awake than last night. You could see the scar more clearly over his left eye and you found you wanted to trace it just as you had wanted to run your finger along his broad nose this morning. 

“Pero.” You liked it. You told him your name and he repeated it back to you to make sure he was saying it correctly. This was becoming a lot easier the more he responded. But as you thought about why he was here, you realised he could be leaving already. Was this just a small trip and he was going back home today?

“Are you staying?” You asked. You realised that may not have made sense outside of the context in your mind. But he nodded nonetheless. 

“I am working for the Lord for a few days. Was wondering if the stable was free again tonight?” You were surprised to hear there was nothing available in the town. This must have been his only option. How fortunate for you. 

“A guest left this morning so we have a room now. I could show you up?” You asked hopefully. And if you weren’t mistaken you think you saw the corner of his mouth tug upwards, only a little. 

He offered no verbal response but you understood. You looked over to where Addy was still ‘working’. You needed to make sure that she was comfortable. As much as your little fancy towards this man was fun, her safety and comfort was more important. 

Darcy saw you looking, poked a finger into Addy’s side and indicated towards you and Pero. You raised an eyebrow, silently conveying that this was her decision. Pero looked towards her also, probably wondering what on earth was going on. But as Addy looked him up and down, she gave an almost imperceptible nod and just as quickly hid behind her board again. 

You turned to Pero with a friendly smile and indicated that he follow you around the side of the tavern towards the guest rooms. 

-

“We bring a bowl of water to your door for washing first thing in the morning. If there is anything else you need, just find one of us and we will see to it.” You had shown him to his room. It was small; a bed against the wall only just large enough to fit him and a small table next to it to place his bag on, but nothing more. He seemed satisfied. You expect if he was a mercenary like you and Darcy had suspected then he was used to far less than this. 

He looked out of the window which overlooked one of the baker’s buildings, smelling the air of the freshly baked breads wafting into his room. 

“Do you mind the smell?” You enquired. He shook his head and turned to you. You expect he is waiting for you to leave him so you turn towards the door when he speaks up. 

“You are the owner?” It wasn’t asked in disbelief, more curiosity. You found you didn’t mind. 

“Yes. It belonged to my father but he died last year.” He looked away from you then, embarrassed that he had asked. You quickly thought of something to say before he felt too bad. “When I was a little girl I looked forward to the mornings when a guest would leave this room. I would come down with my father to help him clean but really, I just wanted to smell the sweet breads being baked across from here.” You giggled softly at the memory. You remember hardly helping your father clean the room at all. You thought you were being sneaky as a child but he must have known exactly why you were so keen to help him clean this particular room. 

Lost in your thoughts you didn’t see Pero smile in your direction. You only saw the look of mischief when he had spoken. “So you were a naughty child?”

You laughed then. In this moment you had almost completely forgotten about the taxman. You felt light and happy and you were so glad this man was comfortable here, in your tavern. You never wanted to leave. But the women needed your help to get the place ready for opening. And you didn’t think you should take up any more of Pero’s time. 

“I am sure you want to rest. I will be opening the tavern up in a few hours. You should come and have a drink.” He seemed to think it over. You didn’t need an answer. You left him standing by the bed as you went to work.


	3. Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reader gets to use her sharp branch on a rude customer, and the sexual tension between her and Pero finally pays off.

Pero had decided to come into the tavern for a drink. He was sat in the corner nearest to you, nursing his second tankard of mead. He hadn’t said a word to you other than a polite ‘thank you’ every time you filled his drink up. 

Which was fine. He wasn’t much of a talker, and he seemed to wander into his own little world now and then, thinking or remembering. You didn’t want to ask. You thought you would sit and try and start a conversation towards the end of the night when most of the locals had gone home. 

You wanted to ask him so many things. What was he doing in England? What was his work with the Lord? Where had he been? If he was a mercenary, you could hardly imagine the places he had been, places you would only ever go to in your dreams. Did he have a family? Was there a mother waiting for news of his safety in some far off country? 

There was only a couple of hours of service left before you closed up. You were itching to talk to him, get to know anything he was willing to offer up to you. 

Your thoughts were interrupted by loud shouting coming through the door. Three young drunk men stumbled into the tavern, almost falling over one another. This happened sometimes. Men who had gotten too drunk in the taverns in town were thrown out by the tavern owners and some of them would find their way to you to continue drinking. If you stayed calm and got them settled at a table away from the other drinkers it would be alright. 

You looked over to Darcy who was torn between greeting them and telling them off. You shook your head at her, letting her know you would deal with it. 

“Boys, having fun this fine evening are we?” You plastered on your most charming smile as you walked towards them. You spotted a table by the door and motioned for them to sit. 

Two of the men were more than happy to take the dead weight off their feet and slumped onto the bench on one side of the table. You expected the third guy to do the same, taking the bench on the opposite side to his friends, but he stayed where he was, looking you up and down suggestively. 

“Well, you’re a pretty thing aren’t you?” You chuckled half-heartedly. You weren’t unused to some of the men who came in flirting with you. You took it on the chin most of the time. It was fun, it encouraged the men to spend more money in your tavern and you couldn’t deny that there was a certain thrill in knowing that men found you attractive. But this man made you shudder. His eyes felt like they wanted to devour you, and not in a good way. His smirk suggested he was a man that was used to getting what he wanted. 

You still had a smile on your face. No one could say you weren’t professional. You decided to be firm but not confrontational. 

“If you take a seat I will have some mead brought over to you and your friends.” He raised an eyebrow and did as you asked, his dark eyes never leaving you. You could tell he was going to be difficult. 

When you got back to the bar counter, Darcy was waiting for you with an empty tankard in her hand.

“Are we really giving them more mead?” She asked apprehensively. If you kicked them out, they would cause a scene, maybe even start a fight and you couldn’t allow that to happen. Not only would it put the other customers at risk, but it could go against you if word got round to the taxman. You couldn’t give him more reason to make your life hell. 

“Water it down a little. We will keep them entertained so they don’t finish it too quickly and want more.” You instructed her. She sighed in relief, believing your plan to be a good one. 

You cast a look over to Pero and saw that he was glaring down the man who had made you feel uncomfortable. Fortunately he was sat facing away from Pero, otherwise you feared a fight was brewing. The stranger was taller than Pero and more muscular in his shoulders and chest. You would have found yourself concerned for him it wasn’t for the sword he kept on him at all times. 

You noticed that Darcy had finished filling up three tankards with the watered down mead and was taking them over. The two men sat together hollered when they saw the drinks, taking them from her before she could place them on the table. 

The tall man sat with his shoulders back, hands clasped together over his chest and a smug look on his face as he watched Darcy place the final tankard on the table in front of him. She gave him a sincere smile, trying to ease the tension that was creeping into the place. 

She said something you couldn’t hear from the other side of the tavern, but whatever it was made him guffaw and lick his lips. 

You could feel yourself getting irritated. Your eyes glanced down to the sharpened branch, wondering if you would get to use it tonight. Not that you wanted to, but you couldn’t deny the relief, no matter how short-lived, you would feel if you smacked this man with it. 

You didn’t have to wonder for long because in the next moment you heard a squeal coming from Darcy as she backed away from the table, a hand rubbing over a spot on her backside. 

The room went quiet for a small second before you heard shouts of outrage coming from disgruntled locals who had witnessed the attack. 

Before you realised what was happening you had grabbed the branch, the sharpened end facing away from you and you were charging over to the tall man. If you had thought about it, you may have realised how dangerous it was to come at a tall, muscular man with nothing but rage and a tree branch. But if you had any advantage at all it was the element of surprise as you came up behind him. 

He had stood up from his bench but only slightly as he went to move towards Darcy. But he didn’t get the chance because you had thrust the pointed end of the branch into the back of one of his knees. As he cried out in pain, you whacked the side of the branch into his back and then shoved the sharp end into the back of his neck, tucked comfortably under his skull. 

“Get out of my tavern,” I demanded, slightly breathless but running on a fervour you had never felt before. You dug the branch in a little more and he gave a grunt of pain.

“Fine, you mad bitch!” He shouted through clenched teeth. He pulled his head away from you but you didn’t move. You kept the branch pointed towards him as he began to hobble towards the front door. You glanced down at the two men he had come into the tavern with. Their wide eyes were staring up at you fearfully. They decided it wasn’t worth staying and getting hurt by you so they quickly scurried off the bench, following the tall man into the night. 

You watched the door slam shut after them before you lowered the branch and turned around to see Darcy looking rather impressed, if also a little teary. 

“Are you hurt?” You asked her as softly as you could. You still felt as though you could fight every man in the tavern but you restrained yourself for Darcy. As soon as you had confirmation that she wasn’t hurt, you left Darcy to walk out of the side door. 

\- 

You found yourself in the stables sweeping the floor aggressively with a broom. You needed to calm down. That wasn’t the first time a man had gotten too handsy with you or your girls. But there was something about this particular man that had made you squirm. Or maybe it was the stress you were under with the taxman on your back. 

You were giving the broom such a hard time you hadn’t noticed Pero walking into the stables behind you. The first indication you had was the soft clearing of a throat. 

You whipped around and saw him leaning a shoulder against the door frame, arms crossed in front of him and watching you with a look you couldn’t yet determine. You closed your eyes and breathed in. You did not want to shout at this man who had done nothing to you. So you took a moment to calm your breathing before you spoke.

“I am sorry. I don’t usually hit men with tree branches, I promise.” You thought a little bit of humour might ease the tension. And it worked when you saw him smirk at you.

“Good. I hope you never do that to me. It looked painful.” You let out a puff of laughter and instantly felt your shoulders relaxing. You walked closer to him to lean the broom against the wall next to the door. 

“My women don’t do that. They are not common tavern wenches. They are here to work and live away from the horrors that would face them if they were to go back home. So it makes me angry when certain men treat them as such.” You didn’t owe him an explanation but you felt compelled to. And he listened intently, as though you were telling him the secrets of the world. His eyes stared into yours in a way that made you feel like the most important person on earth. 

You didn’t realise how close you had gotten to him until you felt his breath on your cheek. He parted his mouth slightly and licked his lips and you couldn’t tear your eyes away from the act. Before you knew what you were doing you launched yourself forward and pressed your lips to his. 

His lips were hesitant at first. You needed something more than _soft_ so you licked along his bottom lip to get him to open up. As soon as he did, your kiss grew hungry and urgent. 

You placed your hands on either side of his head to keep his lips pressed to yours as you slowly walked the both of you backwards towards the stacks of hay. His hands gripped your hips for leverage, but not tightly. They were feather-light touches, as though he didn’t want break you or didn’t want to overstep boundaries. The total opposite to what his mouth was doing to yours. 

You felt the stack of hay hit the back of your shins. You drew away from the kiss, panting desperately as you looked into his eyes. They were searching yours, seeing what you would do next. You took a seat on the stack and grabbed his hand to pull him down to his knees. He obliged, never looking away from you for a second. You thought you’d feel embarrassed under his gaze, but you had never felt more alive. More _wanted._

Still holding onto his hand, you placed it on your ankle and guided it up and under your dress, teasingly running it along your shin, up and over your knee until it rested on the inside of your thigh. 

It was at that moment that Pero was confident that this was what you wanted. He took the initiative to let go of your hand and take charge. He took your hips and pulled you to the edge of the hay stack. He pushed up the edge of your dress until it was bunched up at the top of your thighs and placed his large hands on the inside of your thighs to spread your legs. 

You rested your hands behind you on the hay stack, leaning back slightly to give him the best view you could. You were already wet, had started dripping as soon as your lips had touched his. You couldn’t wait any longer. You gave an urgent buck of your hips to tell him to hurry up and do something. 

He reached forward and ran his finger down from your clit to your opening, making you gasp. He placed his free hand on your hip to steady you and keep you in place whilst he went about his ministrations. He swirled his finger in the wetness that had gathered at your opening before slowly pushing in. You tried to calm your breathing, not wanting to get too worked up too soon. 

He added a second finger and pushed in and out, using a ‘come hither’ motion to run along the inside of your cunt. He took his fingers out after a few moments and ran them back up to your clit to rub quickly in a circular motion. 

He noticed your breaths getting shorter, your hips wanting to buck up more than before and just as your thighs started to clench around him, he pulled away and placed his hands on your knees. 

You frowned and looked at him, thinking something was wrong before you saw the smirk on his face. You had hardly seen him produce any kind of emotion in the day you had known him but now his whole body shone. His eyes were glistening with a mischief you wish you could see all the time. His eyebrows shot up when he saw you looking at him in frustration. He was thoroughly enjoying being here with you. His fingertips tapped at your knees, waiting for your next move. You’d slap him if you weren’t so desperate for a release. 

You thought it over before deciding what to do. You sat up and reached forward until you could grab the back of his head. He let out a sinful groan of pleasure when you accidentally pulled on his hair a little too tightly and you couldn’t help but feel smug about it. You pulled him forward until his face was at eye level with your cunt. You didn’t need to instruct him any further because he was happy to delve his tongue into the wetness of your opening. You fell onto your back, one hand still holding him close to you and the other holding tightly to the gathered fabric of your dress. 

He took your knees and pushed your legs up to your chest to open you up to him. He swiped his tongue from your opening up to your clit, interchanging between swirling his tongue around it and sucking it sweetly. He pushed three fingers into your tight hole as he did so, exploring the bumps and ridges inside whilst you gasped out his name. He soon felt you clamp your thighs around his head, pulling his face impossibly closer to your heat as your chants of his name became more frantic and incomprehensible. With a final cry you clenched up in pleasure, hips bucking and legs shaking before you sighed in content, relaxing your whole body against the hay stack and Pero. 

You lay there breathing heavily. Pero had stopped working your clit but was still thrusting his fingers in and out of you as you rode your high. You opened your eyes and patted at his head to tell him to stop, which he did. You sat up and looked down at where he was still on his knees in front of you. For a second you thought you could get used to this. This Pero who was all about giving, who was out of his own head, who was all yours. You imagined being exactly like this but in your bedroom with the sun shining through the window, completely naked but for the bed covers strewn around you. 

You must have taken too long to say or do something because he started to stand up. That shook you out of your fantasy enough to sit up and grab his arm to stop him from walking away.

“What about you?” You asked. Most men didn’t give you something like this and not expect something similar in return. But this man was full of surprises when he smiled and shook his head.

“You looked like you needed to relax,” was all he said. 

“I don’t mind.” You felt bad. He had given you more attention than any man had in bed. You didn’t want to leave him unsatisfied. But all he did was take a step back and readjust his trousers before offering you a hand. 

“Maybe next time,” he suggested with a wink, making you hopeful that there would be many more moments like these with Pero. Goodness you hoped so.

You nodded and took his hand to help pull you up, straightening your dress as you did and wiping away any bits of straw that had accumulated on your clothing. You couldn’t go back to Darcy and Addy with evidence of your time with Pero. Not that you were ashamed, but they would want to know every sordid detail of the affair and you weren’t afraid to admit that you didn’t want to share this moment. You didn’t want to share Pero in any way. 

You saw him opening the door for you and you smiled. Yes, you could get used to this.


	4. Part IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things between Pero and Reader heat up as the taxman continues his reign of terror, with drastic consequences for the town.

The next morning things were normal. You hadn’t seen Pero at all so he must have gone to the Lord’s manor before you had woken up. You didn’t know what you would have said to him after last night. After your fun in the stables he had lead you back to the front of the tavern where he resumed his drinking at the table he had occupied all night. 

For the rest of the night he kept stealing sly glances towards you. You had found it hard to concentrate on filling tankards and stoking the fire when you kept thinking how all you wanted to do was drag the mercenary upstairs to your bed and see what other wonders he could do with his fingers and tongue. 

Just as you were seeing the last of the locals out through the front door he had turned to you and bid you goodnight. And that was the last you saw of him. 

You were literally shaken out of your thoughts by Gwen who was impatiently tugging on your sleeve. The two of you had taken a walk into the marketplace this morning to grab everything you needed for the next two days. Gwen often accompanied you, more often than not a silent companion. But you were glad to get her out of the tavern and into the fresh air. She was your oldest friend, around the same age as you but she had started working for your father as a young girl of thirteen and you quickly became friends. 

You turned to see her holding her basket out, now half filled with cheese. 

“Do I have enough cheese?” She asked so quietly and earnestly that you couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up and out of your mouth. You nodded and pointed to the fruit stand you were about to walk past. 

“Buy some pears and apples to go with it,” you advise. You spot a stool with some cured meats and let Gwen know that that’s where you would be if she needed you.

You walked over, an empty basket on your arm, and surveyed the food, the smell instantly overwhelming you and making your stomach grumble. 

You noticed the shadow of someone walking behind you and stopping to your left. You would have been worried if not for the large hand coming into your view with a piece of apple between his thumb and index finger. You couldn’t stop the smile lighting up your face as you opened your mouth for him to slip the slice between your lips. You bit down into the apple before closing your lips around it, catching the tip of his finger as you did. 

As you crunched down on the apple slice you turned to see him staring at your lips with a look that told you he would have had you right there if you weren’t in the middle of a marketplace. You gave him a smug look.

“Should you not be at the Lord’s manor?” You asked. You wondered what he was doing here, sauntering around the market eating an apple. 

He continued to cut slices with a small knife, popping them into his mouth and not always finishing chewing when he spoke. 

“He is… entertaining himself.” He spoke slowly, asking you to read between the lines. When he nodded towards a brothel house you understood. 

“Then you should be guarding the building.” You raised an eyebrow. You weren’t going to make it easy for him. You guessed he had left his post because he had seen you. Making him say it out loud was a game to you. One you were enjoying. 

“Yes. I wanted to see you,” he mumbled, but you had heard him. You had succeeded. You didn’t want to push your luck so you turned to the stallholder and pointed to a piece of salted pork on the table.

“How much for that?” You asked. It would be heavy to carry back to the tavern, filling almost your entire basket, but it would sell well with the fruit and cheese. 

The stallholder told you a price and you raised your eyebrows in surprise, only just managing to hold back the laugh of disbelief.

“Make it three coins less and you have a deal,” you suggested. You were not above pleading, but you understood that if the taxman was on your back, he was probably on this man’s back too. “I buy meat from you every week,” you reminded him.

When that didn’t work, you saw Pero moving around to your other side, staring the man down. He placed both the apple and the knife in one hand, and deliberately moved one side of his tunic away with the other hand, resting it on the hilt of his sword. 

When the stallholder noticed, he sighed in disbelief. “Fine,” he huffed. “Two coins less and you can have it.” He didn’t back down from Pero’s glaring and instead held his hand towards you. You handed him the correct coins and thanked him, quickly placing the meat in your basket and dragging Pero away from the stall. 

“You should not have done that for me,” you chided him half-heartedly. He crossed his arms, looking like a child that had just been told off by his mother. You made an effort not to laugh at this. 

“He was trying to con you,” he grumped. You smiled to show you weren’t actually mad at him. 

“He is simply making money for his family. Time’s are hard right now.” He refused to agree with your sympathies but let it go all the same. 

There was a silence, not uncomfortable, but neither of you knowing what to say. You saw him looking towards the building the Lord was currently in and decided you needed to get back to your work. 

“Go. I should find Gwen and get back to the tavern,” you insisted, giving him a light shove. 

He nodded but still looked reluctant to leave you. This made your heart flutter, reminding you of the fancies you had as a young girl for the blacksmith’s son and a village boy. Now you were a a responsible adult and this man in front of you made you feel those same butterflies behind your breast. 

You had to take the first step away before you got too lost in your thoughts. You patted his arm as you swept past him, concentrating on looking for your friend. 

-

It was just as you were opening up for the night that the front door was rudely thrown open. 

Addy had been starting the fire in the fireplace and Darcy was lighting the candles on the tables. They both startled, almost setting the place aflame when it happened. 

You angrily looked up from your place behind the countertop to see the taxman strolling in, looking like a cat that had caught a mouse. You crossed your arms in front of your chest; with his shortness you looked down on him anyway but with the counter between the two of you, it exaggerated the height difference which made you feel smug. 

“It is not Friday yet,” you reminded him of your deal. He reached the counter and slapped his hands on top of it. He made a show of looking around him at the empty tavern, feigning confusion. 

“And you have no custom. Is our deal going to be a problem?” You took a deep breath, shooting him a smile that wasn’t reflected in your eyes. 

“I have only just opened the doors. The money will be yours on Friday.” You stared him down, reminding you of when Pero stared down the stallholder this morning. You wished he was here. You didn’t think your angry face was nearly as fear inducing as his. You would have liked to see Pero unsheathe his long, sharp sword and plunge it into _all_ of the orifices this man possessed. Thinking of this made you smile genuinely, which seemed to unnerve and confuse the man in front of you. 

“You know what happens if you don’t.” He paused. You began to frown. You weren’t completely sure what he was getting at. The tavern would be taken off you would it not? And it would break your heart.

He tutted and stepped back from the counter. He strode over to a table that had a lit candle in the middle of it. He faced you as he started to slowly push on the candle. You watched with bated breath as he pushed just enough to make the candle topple back and forth before it settled straight once again. 

You looked up to the taxman as his smirk grew more cruel.

“I will burn this place to the ground.” Your breathing became more ragged and the blood rushed to your face as you grew angrier with this man. 

“What would be the point in that? The Lord would get no money at all!” Your voice rose in volume, just shy of shouting. You tried to hold on to what little control you had left. 

“The Lord wants an example made. Someone has been making threats against him and his family so the little people,” he pointed in your direction, “are getting punished.” He sneered. Your mind raced as things started to click into place. That was why Pero was working for the Lord. He was guarding him from anyone making an attempt on his life. And that was why you and the whole of the town were paying the prices you were. 

The brief image of your tavern going up in flames caused a lump in your throat. You looked to the two women stood by the fireplace who were holding hands. They looked just as scared as you at the prospect of losing everything they had worked so hard for. You would do anything to prevent that from happening. 

You turned to the weasel of a man who had made his way to the front door.

“That will not be necessary,” you said with all the confidence you could muster. “You will get your money.” 

-

As soon as you had seen Pero entering the tavern that night, you followed him to his room. You were still running on the frustrations that had come with the taxman’s visit earlier in the day. And if Pero allowed it, you needed to channel that frustration somewhere else.

He noticed your presence when he went to shut the door to his room. He saw the sour look on your face and motioned for you to come in. 

He threw his bag on the floor at the bottom of the bed, his cloak soon following it before he turned to you.

“Was there another man like last night?” He asked cautiously. He recognised the same look on your face that you had had last night. He didn’t want to further your anger, instead finding himself wanting to comfort you in any way that he could. Even if it was just talking about it.

But that was the opposite of what you wanted to do. You stood with your hands on your hips, breathing in and out slowly, eyes clenched shut. You shook your head, the only response you could muster up for him. 

You don’t know how long you were standing there, trying to calm your beating heart, when Pero placed his hands on either side of your face. You didn’t bother opening your eyes before he planted his lips onto yours, softly at first before becoming more insistent. Your hands clutched the front of his tunic; he must have discarded his metal plated body armour at some point. 

You tilted your head slightly and allowed his tongue to explore your mouth. A soft moan escaped you and you pulled his body flush against yours. 

When he parted from your lips he threaded one hand through your hair and pulled you forward to touch foreheads. He waited for you to open your eyes before speaking.

“What do you want?” He asked it so softly, so sweetly and without any expectation that you felt yourself taken aback. He had been so giving towards you. This scary, grumpy man with his scarred face and dark eyes, his armour and sword, the intimidating stare he used on people to make them submit to his, and _your_ , will. What had you done to deserve such kindness? You would ask him at some point. But not right now.

“Anything,” you responded breathlessly. “Everything.” You looked at him hopefully. He hadn’t moved yet, and his expression hadn’t changed apart from his eyes leaving yours to flick around your face, taking you in. 

“Take your clothes off. Lie down on the bed.” He was firm, his deep voice sending sparks down through your body to where you ached most. You did as he ordered, slipping off your boots first, your overdress second and then your underdress, leaving you completely bear as you lay on your back in the middle of the small bed.

By the time you had done that, Pero had taken off everything except his trousers. His sword rested on the small table next to you, a habit you assumed, so he could quickly grab it in the event of an intrusion, however unlikely that would be tonight. His clothes had been strewn in various places along the floor. 

You reached towards him as he began to climb up the bed, stopping with his hands on either side of your head. Your fingers traced the muscles on his arms, feeling how defined they were, how easy his arms could crush you if he so wished, or hold you tightly, comfortingly. He ducked down to place hard kisses along your neck, sucking at your pulse point, moving along your clavicle until he was on the other side of your body. He licked a stripe down into the dip of your breasts, making you arch your back to try to get his mouth impossibly closer to your skin.

Your eyes never left him, refusing to miss even a second of the sight in front of you. He moved over to your right breast, sucking the nub into his mouth and swirling his tongue around it. He was soft but urgent. Moving from one point to the other in a rush. His hands held onto your hips, a weight bearing down but not painfully. Once he had finished paying attention to your one breast, he did the same to the other. 

You were a panting mess. Your legs had spread wider the more he continued. You could feel your wetness seeping out of your opening as you kept trying to buck your hips against his hands. You ran a hand through his hair, thick and sweaty from a days work and his current situation. He moaned when you gave an experimental tug of his locks, remembering how he had reacted when you had accidentally pulled too hard kissing him last night. 

It caused him to bite down on the skin of your belly as he made his way further south towards where you wanted him most. You pulled again, making him suck a bruise on the skin of your hip. He looked up then, giving you a mischievous glare, making you laugh.

Whilst he was distracting you, he had snuck his hand down to your core and swirled a finger into the wetness that was collecting there. It made your laugh stick in your throat and you had to break eye contact to clench your eyes shut and tilt your head back in pleasure. He took that as a sign to push a finger into your opening, then another one. He lay his free arm across your hips to keep you still. Your hands gripped the bed covers tightly. 

“More Pero,” you gasped. You needed more than what he had given you last night. You had had a small taste of what he could provide you and you felt greedy and desperate to know what else he could do. What other heights he could send you to. What other noises he could force out of you. “I need more of you,” you tried to clarify amongst groans of pleasure.

He took his fingers out of you, allowing you to relax for a moment. You felt him climb back up the bed to meet you at face level. You saw how dark his eyes had become. He looked at you like he wanted to devour you, his breathing erratic as he thought of all the things he could do to you. He brought his fingers up to your mouth; the fingers that had been inside of you. You opened up, just as you had when he presented you with the apple in the marketplace, and he ever so slowly pushed two fingers into your mouth. You closed your mouth around them, using your tongue to lick them clean. 

Pero let out the deepest most animalistic groan you had ever heard from a person. You would be scared if you didn’t trust him as much as you did. You felt the vibrations travel from his chest to yours where he lay on top of you. He couldn’t take it anymore. He snatched his fingers away and stood up from the bed, hastily pulling down his trousers and kicking them in the general direction of his other clothes.

He climbed back onto the bed and grabbed your legs underneath your knees, pushing them up against your chest.

“Are you sure?” He asked. You nodded frantically, moving your legs so they were hanging over his shoulders. He grabbed his cock in one hand and ran it along your slit, earning an impatient whine from you. You held onto the pillow you rested your head on with both hands as he finally pushed inside of you.

You let out all of your breath, feeling his length and girth in the most wonderful way. When he could push in no further, he sat seated in you for a moment, letting himself savour the moment. When you couldn’t take it anymore you gave a buck of your hips. He leaned forward until his chest was rested against the back of your thighs and placed his hands at your sides on the bed. 

He pulled almost all the way out before thrusting back in, making you jolt against the bed. You arched your back, pleasure hitting every spot in your body as he sped up his thrusts, getting more frantic. 

You felt the pressure building in your core, your stomach tightening. You reached down between the two of you, rubbing, circling, pushing on your clit to get you to your high. His cock was hitting a spot no one, not even your own fingers, had been able to hit before. You shouted his name in pleasure when you felt yourself let go. Your legs pushed down on Pero’s back and your thighs would have squeezed around him if he hadn’t chosen that moment to hold them down against you chest.

He never slowed in his thrusts, getting closer to his own release. He mumbled things in his native tongue that you wished you understood. He went deep and fast, chasing the pleasure you were giving him. You whined and bucked when you started to get oversensitive but you never stopped him. Enjoyed this side of Pero that wanted you _this much._

“Come on Pero. You make me feel so good. Release in me.” You brought him to the edge with your words. He thrusted in as deep as he could go and released, his whole body shuddering through it. He gasped out your name, letting out harsh deep breaths. 

When he had come back to his senses, he pushed your legs off his shoulders, allowing him room to lean down and place a chaste kiss to your lips, chin, jaw and cheek. You stifled a laugh in his shoulder, biting down softly before softly pushing at them. He lifted his head up.

“Are you alright?” He asked sincerely. You briefly wondered if he asked this of every woman he slept with, just as quickly shaking the thought away. You hoped not. You hoped you were more special to him than that. 

“I have never felt better,” you chuckled, earning a smile in return. He sat up, thinking over how to place the two of you in the tiny bed. He decided to turn you onto your side whilst he lay down on his back, pulling you half on top of him and laying your head on his chest. 

You listened to the beating of his heart as it slowly slowed to a normal pace. His one hand traced lines up and down your arm, mimicking what yours was doing to his chest. His other hand pulled loose the ribbon that had held together the plait in your hair. Once he had discarded it, he began running his fingers through your hair. 

The soothing actions almost sent you to sleep until you remembered why you had come to Pero’s room in the first place and why you had been so angry.

“The taxman threatened to burn down the tavern.” You probably should have minced your words because you felt him stiffen underneath you. You moved your hand up his chest and past his neck to rub soothingly at the patches of hair along his jawline. “He wants more money by the end of the week. Which he will get. That isn’t the problem. But the way he came in today, the way he spoke to me, made me so angry.” 

Pero held you tighter against him as you spoke. You wanted to sleep and forget about it for one night, but once you had started speaking, confiding in him, you couldn’t stop.

“The girls. Gwen has been here for almost fifteen years. She can hardly remember a life before the tavern. And Darcy, she travelled all the way from Ireland to escape her family. I found Addy in the market place a few months ago. She had nothing but the clothes on her back. They are scared they will be without a home again, no matter what I tell him, or how much I reassure them. I could see it in Addy’s eyes.” You took a moment to breathe, taking note of the hand that had been playing with your hair was now delicately massaging your head. 

“I’m afraid that even if I give him the money he is asking for, he won’t stop there. He said something about the Lord setting an example, sending a message to the people. I would be willing to lose everything if it was just me but it’s not. I’m responsible for those women.” You stifled a yawn against his chest. You wished he would tell you what to do. Be as firm and strong as he had been when he was pleasuring you. You wanted someone to give you a solution but you feared there wasn’t one. 

“You worry too much about other people,” was all he said. You frowned, finding yourself disappointed with his response. Those three women relied on you, looked up to you, you couldn’t _not_ worry about them. You sat up and gave him a look of disbelief. 

“Take away the circumstances in which they came to me, and they are still people who work for me. It is my role to look after them.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “but they are also grown women. You can only look after them so much before you may as well be their mother.” That brought back some of the anger you had felt earlier. You couldn’t believe he was arguing with you. He clearly did not understand your feelings. You huffed and stepped off the bed in search of your clothes.

“Where are you going?” He asked with a sigh. He sat up and tried to reach towards you but you stepped out of the way of his hands. “I do not mean to offend-“

“You don’t offend,” you assured him, suddenly feeling bad for reacting as you did. You are rash with your actions sometimes, you understand this. But the truth was, your conversation had woken you up now and you wouldn’t have been able to fall asleep if you tried. And after everything you had done together, you didn’t want it to end in an argument. “The tavern is still open. I should help close up.”

You looked up in time to see him school his features from a look of disappointment to one of indifference. It made your heart hurt. Once you had dressed yourself you walked back over to him, placing a soft kiss to his lips and rushed out of the room before you could see his response. 

-

The tavern was quiet when you arrived. Addy was sat at a table drinking from a tankard. You gave her a smile when she spotted you, and she returned in earnestly. Darcy was stoking the remaining sparks of the fire, ensuring it would stay warm until you were ready to close. You took your place behind the countertop to see that there were only a handful of locals still drinking. You would give it an hour at most before asking them to leave. 

But you didn’t have to wait that long because an older woman in what appeared to be her night dress pushed into the tavern, red faced and out of breath.

“Fire… at the baker’s house. There is a fire!” She exclaimed before running back out again. 

For a moment everyone in the tavern looked to one another, before the shock dissipated and they all sprung into action. Addy had already left her bench and was running after the woman, the drinkers following shortly behind. 

“Darcy stay here,” you shouted over in the direction of the fireplace before rushing out of the door. 

You ran around the side of the tavern to see what the old woman had described. The baker’s building, the same one you had such fond memories of as a child, the one that sat across from the room that Pero was staying in, was on fire.

The flames enclosed the entire building, pushing out through the windows and the thatched roof. There were men and women collecting buckets of water from the large pond a yard away from the tavern, passing them down along a line of willing volunteers until they reached those who were throwing the water uselessly over the flames. 

You stood back and watched in horror. You saw your tavern in its place instead. Imagining the scene on Friday if the taxman did not keep to his word. You wondered if the bakers family were safe or had been caught up in the fire. And then you thought about you being in the flames, men setting fire to the tavern with you still in it. 

You felt strong hands grip onto your hips from behind and you leaned back into them. You realised you had started to cry and desperately tried to wipe the tears away before he noticed. You felt his lips on the shell of your ear.

“This will not happen to you, _mi corazon,_ ” he whispered, his words comforting and strong as you struggled to keep it together. He stepped back from you and rolled up his sleeves before running towards the burning building. 

You watched as he took buckets of water, throwing the contents high over the flames. You wished you could help him but you felt paralysed where you stood. 

Out of the corner of your eye you saw the movement of a horse, a short man in a cape sat atop. You squinted your eyes to get a better look and as he turned, the light from the flames revealed his face to be that of the taxman. If you were in any doubt before that he was responsible then that was washed away when you saw him laugh at the efforts of the townspeople coming together to help one of their own. 

You felt sick watching as he galloped away from the horror in front of you.


	5. Part V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reader struggles to deal with the aftermath of the fire, the taxman continues to scare the girls and Pero is a grumpy protective man.

You couldn’t ignore the sight of the blackened, fallen down building out of the window. The charred remains of the wooden sign, the smoke still wafting out of the now non-existent roof. There were a few people rifling through the debris, looking for anything that could be salvageable or more grimly, remains of the owners.

You were slipping on your boots when you heard Pero stir from his slumber. You couldn’t bring yourself to smile at the sight of him; the messy hair, the frown lines across his forehead, his hand searching blindly for you next to him. Too much was keeping you from being happy in this moment.

When he opened his eyes cautiously in the bright light of the morning sun and saw you fully dressed in front of the window he let out a grunt of displeasure. 

“Hermosa,” his voice was soft and cracking from sleep. “Come back. They do not need you right now.” 

You went over and held the hand that was reaching out to you. Pero linked your fingers with his and tried to pull you down towards the bed but you held steady. Feeling you fight him spurred him to take more action. He swiftly sat up, grabbing your hips and sitting you sideways on his lap. His arms wound around your waist and held you tightly to him. 

You smiled then, a small one, but there was still sadness in your eyes. Pero rested his chin on your shoulder and began trailing delicate kisses along your jawline. 

“I have to go Pero,” you insisted when your heart began to beat faster. His kisses stopped just under you ear. “I have to open early today. I need to bring as much money in as I can.”

“You said you would be able to pay him, no problem.” Pero pulled away from your neck and looked up into your eyes, daring you to lie to him. 

“And I will. If I open up a little earlier everyday. And putting the prices up will help and it doesn’t look as though any guests will be leaving their rooms but if they do I will need to fill them immediately.” You listed off everything you were doing to try and make the money you needed, your mind was racing, thinking of anything else you could do to help your situation.

Pero listened intently. Seeing your work ethic made him proud and admire you even more than he already did. It was one of the reasons he liked you so much. Your inability to let anything get in your way, despite your fear and desperation. How you worked through a problem was the kind of smart he thought himself incapable of. 

He lifted a hand up to your cheek to bring you down for a slow kiss. You gave in to his distraction just as he pulled away. His hand held your face close to his as he spoke. 

“You know I sometimes see who I think is the taxman. Nasty _hombre_ with these little eyes-“

“-Yes! That is him.” You angrily exclaimed, your features changed so harshly that Pero would have been scared if you had been talking about him.

“He is always in the Lord’s private rooms at the manor. Spends hours in there sometimes.”

“He works for the Lord. That is not unusual.”

“No but…” He pursed his lips, seeming to think over his next words. “I could follow him out one day…”

You gasped, catching on to his insinuations. You looked horrified for a moment before beginning to seriously think it over. Pero raised an eyebrow in amusement when he realised you might not say ‘no’ to his proposition. 

You realised you hadn’t said anything and quickly shook your head. “No.” 

“I could just rough him up-“

“Pero no.” You kissed him hastily to stop him from saying anything else. “To begin with, I could not ask you to do something like that for me.” When he went to object you placed your hand over his mouth. “I could not. And also, if you did that either the Lord would replace him with someone else, maybe even someone worse, or they would take more drastic measures than they already have.” You stole a glance out the window to illustrate your point. 

You squealed when you felt his tongue poke out and swipe your palm, taking away your hand and forcing your attention back on him. 

“You are a good person, _hermosa_. I knew you would never agree.” You sighed and leaned down to kiss his nose. 

You got up from his lap, stepping over his clothes that had been strewn on the floor, and was about to open the door when you turned to him one last time.

“Thank you. It is nice to know you have my back.”

“Always,” you heard him whisper as you left his room. 

-

You were helping Gwen cook pies in the kitchen, cutting up vegetables whilst she made the pastry and lay them in the tins. You mostly sat in the silence. Gwen wasn’t much of a talker at the best of times but this morning you could feel her distress radiating off her. She kept worrying her lip and avoiding your gaze where you sat watching her from the table. 

You were relieved when Darcy came into the room and threw herself into the chair next to you. She grabbed a carrot and a knife from the side and began slicing. She looked up at Gwen who hadn’t turned away from her pastry, and then to you. 

“They found the baker. He was caught up in the fire.” She whispered to you so as not to disturb Gwen, but it was so agonisingly quiet in the kitchen that she probably heard everything Darcy was saying. 

“And his family?” You asked. The baker was in his forties, his wife had died a little before your father had, but he had a daughter and her husband living with him. You had attended their wedding last summer. They had looked so happy, looking forward to spending the rest of their lives together, to start a family and eventually take over the bakery when her father got too old. 

“They had been in the market all day and were walking back home when they saw the fire.” You sighed in relief. They would have to mourn their father, but at least they still had their future. 

“Do you think it had anything to do with the taxman?” You didn’t hear Addy entering the room. No matter how soft her voice was it still made you jump, and the knife in your hand nipped the tip of your thumb as you did. Darcy gasped and grabbed your hand with the bleeding thumb, making you drop the knife in your other hand onto the table with a loud clatter. 

Gwen spun around at the commotion, saw what had happened and quickly grabbed a cloth, wrapping it tightly around your thumb. Darcy took over and held her hand around the cloth to stop the bleeding. 

“I am fine,” you insisted, embarrassed that the girls were fussing over you like this. It’s usually you fussing over them, you didn’t like the attention. 

“I’m sorry,” Addy apologised. She looked horrified and walked behind your chair grasping onto your shoulder, giving it a soothing rub.

You felt yourself getting flustered. You forced down the lump in your throat. You would not cry in front of them. The cut wasn’t even deep, there was no need for everyone to crowd around you like you were about to faint. 

“I am fine Addy.” You tried to give her a reassuring smile but it wasn’t convincing. You pulled your hand away from Darcy’s grip, taking the cloth away from your thumb to see that the bleeding had already stopped. You held it up to show Addy and she breathed a sigh of relief.

You scraped your chair back loudly. You needed to leave. With Addy bringing up the taxman you remembered seeing him on his horse the night before, galloping away from the building he had obviously just burnt down, killing a man you had known since a child. With that image you felt your emotions threatening to boil over.

“We are opening earlier today so I need everything ready by mid afternoon.”

You didn’t wait for their response as you left towards the stables.

-

You were outside, near the stables where you kept a small pen with four hens. You picked up the bag of feed from the shelf above them and threw handfuls on the floor for them. 

You were trying to distract your mind, holding back the tears that were coming to the surface. Everything was becoming too much. If your father were still here he would have known what to do. He would have sorted this all out by now. You probably would have been none the wiser that there had been anything wrong in the first place.

He had always been good at keeping the bad things in life far away from you. Ever since your mother died he had sheltered you from the storms, protected you from the harsh realities of life. You wish you could be under his guidance again. You wanted nothing more than to run and hide from this mess.

As much as you wished to be that naive again, you also wished he had prepared you better. You were getting older, he was allowing you more responsibilities in the tavern by the time you were twenty. He should have known he would not always be around to help. You started to feel anger at the man who had left you in this predicament. He should have fought harder to stick around in this life. 

You rubbed away the tear that had fallen down your cheek as though it were poison. You placed the bag of feed back on the shelf and turned away in time to see Pero walking out of the door that lead to the guest rooms. 

He was dressed in his armour, his sword by his side and had forgone the cloak he usually wore with the weather slightly warmer than it had been for a while. 

You wanted to move quickly back through the stable door so he didn’t see you but you were out of luck. He caught your eye and started to smile before he saw your blood shot eyes. 

He hurried over, cupping you face in his calloused hands when he reached you.

“What has happened?” He was abrupt and to the point. He needed to know if someone had hurt you. 

“Nothing,” you began, but when you took in his thunderous stare you knew that would not be a good enough answer.

“I cut my finger. And the girls were fussing and it all became too much to deal with.” He still didn’t look convinced, which annoyed you slightly because you weren’t lying. But you also weren’t telling the full story about the taxman and the fire. 

You had realised you were similar in how you dealt with your emotions. Although you hadn’t seen his temper yet you could imagine it rivalled that of beating a drunk man with a stick, if how much that had turned him on was anything to go by. And the look he was giving you now, as well as what he implied this morning, told you Pero would kill the taxman in cold blood if you asked him to. But you knew if he did that you would lose him forever. If he was lucky he would have to flee the town and never seen you again, or more likely he would be caught and hung for his crime. 

So you stubbornly left it at that. He relented when you refused to say any more and let go of your face to place his hands in yours instead.

“I will not be back tonight. The Lord is meeting with important people all evening and he wants me there until they are gone.” 

You felt your heart drop. You had been looking forward to stealing kisses, and more, with him throughout the night. It was the only thing that took your mind away from your life crumbling around you. 

He saw your look of disappointment before you could disguise it. He placed a kiss to your forehead, then your nose and finally your lips. He pulled away before you could deepen it. 

“Do not pout. I will see you tomorrow.” He lifted your hands up so he could kiss the knuckles on both before letting them go. 

You rushed into the stables before he could see you and dropped down onto a stack of hay, the very same one Pero had pleasured you on a couple of nights ago. 

You couldn’t control your emotions any longer. You let out a cry, trying to stifle the noise in your hand. When that didn’t work you bunched up your dress and pressed your face into the fabric, sobs wracking your body. You thanked God you were alone.

-

The light breeze made their bodies swing side to side, the wooden gallows they were tied up to creaking from the weight of them. One man could have been your age you supposed, but his face was starting to bloat a reddish, purple colour so you could have been mistaken. The other man had greying hair and you could see the wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. You imagined the hardships he had faced in his life, how close he had come to dying peacefully in his family’s arms in the comfort of his home, only to meet his maker like this instead.

There was a woman too. Her hair was beautifully long, plaited down to the bottom of her back. The same colour as your hair. And for a second you saw your face on hers. Your hair floating in mid air instead of hers. 

You had no doubt that the hangings this morning were a result of the taxman, directly or otherwise. The beat of your heart thumped loudly in your ears as you stared. There was a young man sat on the floor in front of the bodies, hands clasped in prayer. Maybe the older man’s son, or the woman’s husband. It didn’t matter. He was one of many who would lose loved ones in this fight. 

Would Pero mourn your death as this stranger was mourning the death of his loved one? Would he avenge you and die in the process? Or would he pack his bag and continue on his travels? Another person on his list of those he had seen die, except this one wouldn’t be by his hand. 

You heard the chiming of the church bells close to you. You took it as a personal reminder that your time was running out. You may not end up like these poor people but you wouldn’t be much better off without a home and no work. 

The morning was nearly over and you needed to get back for the mead delivery. You tore yourself away from the bodies and ended up slamming into a warm one.

You went to apologise when you saw it was Pero. He was looking grimly at the public spectacle, just as you were. For some reason this surprised you. A man such as himself should be used to unnatural death, but his facial expression suggested different. You wanted to ask him why he felt anything at all but it felt too personal. Too invasive of a question when you hardly knew one another.

“Are you finished here?” He asked. You were confused for a second before remembering that you had been here to buy mead. 

“Yes, they are carrying the mead barrels for me. They should be there by the time I get back.”

“I will walk with you.” He said with a finality you admired. 

You spent the walk back stealing glances at him. Whatever he had been doing last night at the manor had made him tired, his shoulders were slumped and his eyes bloodshot. You thought about Gwen being in the kitchen and you made a mental note to see if she had any milk and honey mixture left over from this morning to give to him to help him rest. 

“I may not be here much longer.” His voice was quiet and apologetic. You found you couldn’t move your feet as you absorbed this information, Pero was a few steps in front of you before he noticed you no longer at his side. 

His eyes were downcast as you turned at him. You wanted to grab him and hold him to you, tell him you needed him and plead with him to never leave. But you knew this day would eventually come. He wasn’t a man that could be kept in one place for long. You knew deep deep down in your heart that it would break because he didn’t feel for you the way you had fell for him. 

“Will you say something, _mi corazon_ ,” he urged. He would rather you shout at him than say nothing at all. He was used to confrontation and heightened emotions but not _nothing_. He had no idea how to deal with passiveness. 

“What is there to say? You were always going to leave, Pero.” You managed to keep your tone monotonous, refusing to give away the feelings that were hurting you on the inside. 

“The Lord does not believe the threats will come to anything. So he will not need me anymore.” He explained. You had to give it to him, at least he was telling you and not letting you find out he was gone with an empty bed and a disappearing act. 

You reached your hand out without looking and grazed the back of your hand against his. He took your thumb, the one you had cut yesterday, between his thumb and finger, holding onto it softly. It was little touches like these that broke your heart the most. He could be so tender and thoughtful, a perfectly affectionate man without being stifling or too much. You could forget about the nights of passion, or brush aside the ardent kisses, but it was the barely there caresses of skin on skin that you would long for at night when he was gone. 

You walked the rest of the way in silence, still attached by fingers lightly swinging in between the two of you. It made you smile to yourself. You would take these moments as they came, before they were gone for good.

You reached the tavern, the barrels of mead you had brought this morning sat in front of the door. Addy was looking at them as though she had never seen mead before, so confused, hands on her hips trying to work something out.

She heard you laughing before she saw you. When she looked up, her eyes glanced down at where you and Pero were linked but she didn’t say anything. You were grateful.

“What has got you so stumped?” You asked in jest.

“They just left them here!” She exclaimed, as though that was enough of an answer. When you didn’t respond she threw up her hands in exasperation. “They could have brought them inside for us, now we have to roll them in!”

You rolled your eyes at her dramatics. They were heavy, yes, but not impossible to move. There were three barrels and three people, so you could all take one.

But it seemed Pero was having none of it.

“You girls go inside, I will bring them in.” You wanted to argue. You have spent the past year doing everything without the help of a man, you were sure you could handle a few barrels. 

“ _Hermosa,_ ” he whispered to you. “You have many things to worry about, let me worry about this one thing.” He was making it very hard for you to get over him when he left town. You wondered then how easy it was for him to leave you. If he could continue as though nothing was going to change, did he care that he may never see you again? 

You gave it no more thought and nodded. He placed his hand on the small of your back, ushering you into the tavern so he could get to work. 

You remembered how tired he looked in the marketplace and headed towards the kitchen. Addy was stood in the doorway, unmoving. You thought the sound of your footsteps would be enough to shake her out of her daydreaming, but you had to physically move her to the side in order to step around her.

You immediately saw why she was acting so strangely. The taxman was sat down, feet crossed and resting on the table, flipping a coin in his right hand. Gwen was stood in the corner of the room, the taxman blocking her path out towards the stables and Addy was blocking her path to the door you had walked through. She was wringing the cloth in her hand, looking anywhere but at the man at the table.

“Addy take Gwen out of the kitchen,” you commanded. Your sternness brought Addy back to earth and she quickly did as you wished, pulling Gwen out of the room. 

You turned to the taxman with a look of fury that you hoped would wipe the smirk off his face. It didn’t. 

“I’m not trying to cause trouble,” he began, his hands going up in mock surrender, but his laugh said otherwise. “The Lord wants to remind you that you have two days to get the rest of the money together. Or if you still have that other pouch of coins-“

“Of course I don’t,” you spoke through gritted teeth. He knew you would have used that to buy what you needed to keep the tavern going. You were still trying to fill the pouch back up with coins. You would have to count it later to see just how many coins short you were to pleasing this man. 

“Well that is careless,” he mumbled. He took his feet off the table, finally, and stood up as tall as he could. He strode over to the door that led outside. 

“Two days, Miss,” he shouted over his shoulder. “You wouldn’t want those poor girls without a home again would you?” And with that he slammed the door shut behind him.

You felt the breath get stuck in your throat, almost choking you. How did he know about the girls? No one knew how they had come to work in your tavern. If anyone asked you said Addy and Darcy were distant cousins on your mother’s side and that was that. _You_ didn’t even know all the details so how did he know of their previous situations?

You suddenly heard heavy boots running down the corridor and saw Pero rushing into the kitchen through the other door.

“Where is that _bastardo?_ ” He seethed with anger, his eyes darting around the kitchen for the taxman. You assumed Addy must have said something to him.

“He is gone-“

“What did he do?”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle, Pero.” He placed his hands on his hips and stared you down at your raised voice. You were frowning, slightly annoyed that he thought he could come to your rescue like this. Your words came out before you had time to think about them. “You think I haven’t had to deal with men like that before? You think I won’t have to again when you have gone?”

He froze at that. You didn’t mean to be harsh and you definitely didn’t want to push him away sooner than he had to go. But if he was leaving soon, you didn’t want to get used to him being there to carry heavy barrels and hit men that were on your back. The only person you could rely on to hold this damn tavern together was yourself. Even if you were admittedly doing a terrible job of it. 

He dropped his arms down to his side and sighed. You held your ground. You weren’t going to apologise when that’s how you felt. 

“You are right.” He looked defeated, exhausted and in no mood to fight with you. You were too stubborn to feel bad in this moment but knew you would later on. “ _If_ you need me, I will be resting.” He moved past you, no comforting touches or kiss to the forehead that you had been accustomed to when he was being particularly sweet towards you. He walked out of the kitchen as though he were nothing more than a guest in your lodgings. 

-

You sat on the floor in your bedroom, coins scattered on the wooden box that your clothes were kept in. Some were in piles, others you were still counting. It was your third recount but it wouldn’t make a difference. You were not going to have enough by Friday. 

You ran a hand through your hair, gripping it at the roots. You shouldn’t have brought three barrels of mead this morning. You should have haggled better for the salted meats this week. You would have to ask Gwen if she could make more pies to sell, thin the pastry or only place lids on the filling. 

But whatever you did wouldn’t be enough when you only had two more nights. 

You would need to have a serious talk with the girls tomorrow. You would have to ask them what they wanted to do if, _when_ , you lost the tavern. The stubborn side of you wanted to stay until the bitter end. Watch as the building burned to ash and smoke and crumbled in front of you. But the more realistic, practical side of you wanted to run. Take the girls north up the river and find somewhere new to settle down. Find another tavern to work in or better yet, rebuild your tavern elsewhere. You imagine the heartache would ease eventually. Maybe never disappear, but by putting your hard work and love into someplace new, you could have a fresh start. Away from this town, and most importantly away from everything that reminded you of Pero. 

You thought back to how you had left things with him in the kitchen. You hoped he would come into the tavern later tonight. You would apologise if it meant not fighting with him anymore. You wanted to drink with him, hear his laughter, feel his lips on yours. You yearned to forget the terrible future that awaited you in two days time.


	6. Part VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reader has a serious conversation with her girls, Pero faces off against the taxman and is that a ray of hope?

This was possibly the hardest thing you had ever had to do. 

Harder even than having to finally let go of the cold, frail hand of your dead father, the life having ebbed away hours before. You had wanted to fight Gwen’s concerned touches as she tried to pull you out of the room to get some fresh air. You had found it so difficult to carry on as normal in the days after. You felt lifeless travelling to the marketplace to buy what you needed to keep the tavern going. You had hated the pitying looks of the stallholders and the townspeople who had known your family all their lives. You had to battle your emotions and keep yourself together for the sake of your father’s memory. 

This was harder than when you tried with all the might of a small child to stay strong as your father sat you on your tiny bed and told you that your mother had gone to a better place. You had wanted to cry and push away your father’s hands as you shouted that you wanted to go to that better place and live with your mother for the rest of your life. You were confused, your mind was racing, asking yourself why she had left you. Was it your fault? Did you do something wrong? You promised to be a better daughter and maybe she would change her mind and come back to you.

As you looked into the eyes of the women you had promised you would always look after, you felt like that child again. Scared and angry that it had come to this. You tried to be a brave leader. You tried to reassure them that as long as you were all together then things would work themselves out. 

“I do not trust the taxman. Even if we could pull together the money we owe, I am not sure he will leave us alone,” you explained. You thought Darcy was going to cry, her eyes were watering and her fingers were trembling so you reached forward and took her hand in both of yours. 

“Darcy,” you whispered. You were sure her grip on you would bruise. “I will not leave you. You understand?” She nodded frantically. “Breathe,” you urged her. You kept your eyes on hers, trying to get her to calm down and focus on your words. “If we have to move, then so be it. We will find somewhere else, but we will be together.” 

That seemed to calm her a little. She sighed deeply through her nose and pulled her hand from yours to cross her arms over her chest. You sat back and surveyed how the other two women were doing.

Gwen cast her eyes down to her hands that were clasped tightly in her lap. She had never been without a home. Before she came to you she lived in a small hut with her mother on the edge of the river. Her life wasn’t easy but she always had the bed she shared with her mother and a roof over her head. Tomorrow she may not.

“What are you thinking Gwen?” You ventured hesitantly. She hardly talked at the best of times, you didn’t expect her to answer you. But she held out her hand to hold yours as she thought over the words to say to you.

“You have always looked after me.” Her voice was quiet as always, but it echoed around the kitchen in the tense silence you had created this morning. You smiled and willed her to go on. 

“I have no doubt that you will continue to look after me.” She looked back down to her lap to indicate that was all she had to say and continued to hold your hand. 

You felt your bottom lip tremble. She had the kindest soul of anyone you knew. Her words gave you hope that the other women would believe in you as much as she did. You bit your lip to try and contain your emotions.

You glanced over at Addy who hadn’t said a word so far. She seemed to be in deep thought. Her brilliantly logical mind trying to come up with a solution that meant not leaving your home. 

You swallowed back your tears and placed your free hand on her knee to grab her attention. 

“ _Mon amie,_ ” she begrudgingly sighed in defeat before continuing. “When do you suggest we leave? Before or after he arrives for the money?” 

You thought it over. If there was the smallest chance that you could have the coins you needed by tomorrow, and the tiniest chance that the taxman would accept it and leave your tavern in one piece until the next tax day, then you were going to take it. 

“Pack a bag in the morning. I will count the coins tonight and let you know when I have made a decision.” 

They seemed to trust you enough to agree. You breathed a sigh of relief and stood up. 

“We will be opening early again today. Use up all of the food we have Gwen, we must sell it all. And Darcy,” she looked up eagerly at you, desperate to do anything she could to help. “Do not be liberal with the mead. Make it last as long as possible.” 

That seemed to encourage them to get to work.

-

You took a moment before opening up the tavern to sweep the stables and clear your mind. Keeping things clean and tidy was something your father had taught you. _A clear home is a clear mind._ You hadn’t understood it at the time but now you could see the appeal. The act of something as simple as this required a concentration that meant your mind wasn’t overthinking the more complicated things in life. Stepping to the side, moving your arms in the same motion over and over again, the sound of the bristles sweeping the stone floor simplified your thoughts. 

You heard the squeak of the stable door and looked over to see Pero walking through. You went back to your sweeping having remembered how you shouted at him in the kitchen last night. You wanted to ask him why he hadn’t drank in the tavern afterwards. You hoped it was just because of how tired he had been, your heart hurting at the thought that it could have been because he didn’t want to see you. 

“I have just come from the tavern. I thought you would be getting ready to open up.” He walked over to a hay stack and sat down to watch you. You quickly glanced up to see that he looked more refreshed than he had for a few days. You consoled yourself with the fact he must have slept the evening away. 

“I will. I had to clean the stables,” you mumbled your response. He raised an eyebrow in scepticism. You weren’t fooling him into thinking this was at the top of your list of priorities. 

“Darcy looked…” His eyebrows were pinched together in concentration and his hand was waving in the air as he tried to think of the right word in English. You waited patiently, smiling at the fumbling man in front of you. You found it adorable. “Scared?” He looked unhappy with his word choice.

He was probably right. You remembered how she had looked this morning and how close to crying she had been. All the women were feeling helpless right now.

“I told them what would happen if we could not make the money.” You set the broom aside and stood in front of Pero. He opened his legs and held your hips to guide you forward in between them, close enough that he could look up at your face over your breasts. 

“You have tonight. It will not be a problem?” He shaped it into a question and waited for your answer. You were fed up of lying and skirting around the truth as you had been doing all week. You could have smiled and nodded and ended the conversation. But you needed to tell him what was likely going to happen tomorrow. 

“I do not think tonight will make a difference.” You tried to say it strongly but your voice conveyed the heartache you felt at the knowledge that you were most definitely going to lose everything. 

“ _Mierda!_ ” He exclaimed, his hands clutching onto your hips tighter. “You said you would make the money, easy.”

“Fine, I lied!” You rubbed a hand down your face and sighed. “No, I was being hopeful.”

“Hope won’t beat a taxman, _mi corazon_ ,” he mumbled and moved his hands up and down your sides in a motion that comforted you but you suspected was a means of comforting himself as well. 

You ran your hands through his hair, front to back until you reached around to the sides of his face. Your thumbs stroked his cheek bones until he opened his eyes to lock onto yours.

“ _Nina terca,_ ” he whispered and clicked his tongue.

“I can only assume that when you speak your native tongue you are insulting me.” He barked out a laugh. This side of Pero put you at ease. Made you feel as though you could get through anything as long as he was by your side and laughing with you. 

“I said you are stubborn.” You pouted and he smiled more. “You should allow me to deal with this. You need not lose your home.”

You shook your head. You could so easily go down such a dark path. Men have done much worse in the midst of desperate circumstances. But you could not excuse violence, or _death,_ in your name. Your father would be so disappointed in you for even considering it. 

“I have asked the girls to pack a bag. We will go north and start anew.” Pero swallowed the lump in his throat and looked away. “I have no other choice,” you insisted. 

“Let me help in some way,” he pleaded, wrapping his arms around your waist and bring you forward so he could bury his face in your stomach. You held him close, scratching your short nails against his scalp. He sighed at the feeling.

“You can help me set up for the evening.” It was all you would ask of him, and all you could do in the meantime. 

-

The night had been busy so far. The locals carried on drinking as though everything was fine. You were down to your last barrel of mead, half empty. You would sell every last drop. 

Addy had spent most of the evening walking back and forth from the kitchen as Darcy had spun her charm to persuade more people than usual to spend their coin on pies, cheese and meats. 

You were proud of your girls, working through the fear, putting on a brave face. 

Pero had joined you later in the evening. He had pulled you out from behind the countertop and sat you next to him at the table furthest from the front door, hidden in the shadows of the tavern. He didn’t buy any mead, despite you offering to give him a tankard for free. 

“Let someone give you their coin for it,” he had replied and you had kissed him for it, not caring if anyone should see. You needn’t care about anything tonight. What would be, would be. You either made up the coin you needed or you didn’t. Your girls were working so hard there was nothing more anyone could do.

You and Pero talked about everything and nothing, his hand resting on the top of your thigh under the table, your hand wrapped around his upper arm, your body turned towards him to give him your full attention. 

“Is there anywhere you have not been?” You asked, your eyes flashing with intrigue. He had been telling you about a friend from Ireland he had made who had travelled with him to a place you had never heard of. He spoke of terrifying creatures that nearly ended their lives, so unbelievable his story was you almost thought he was joking with you. 

“Probably,” he shrugged and leaned closer to you. “I do not do this for the places I go to. I do it because it is all I am good at.”

You frowned at his self-deprecation. “That cannot be true,” you insisted. 

“Fine.” He paused, his gaze slipping down to your lips. “The money is not bad either.” He snatched the laugh from your mouth with a hasty kiss and chuckled with you. 

“What would make you stop?” You asked the question before you knew you were going to. The smile disappeared from your face as his features froze. You were kicking yourself for ruining the moment, but he didn’t seem annoyed at your question. Instead he was staring at you, the ghost of a smile still on his lips, thinking over his answer. 

He shrugged. “I am sure something would,” was all he said. You wouldn’t press him. You didn’t want to get your hopes up. There was too much heartache for you to handle this week, you wouldn’t add Pero to it. You may not recover if you did. 

You nodded and looked away, filling in the silence by seeing how Addy and Darcy were doing. Addy was now designated tankard filler, standing behind the countertop. Darcy was laughing with familiar faces and keeping spirits up. You imagine Gwen was putting together more food, rolling out the last little bit of pastry for her pies. 

You wished you could stay in a moment like this forever, but all good things must come to an end. And nothing illustrated this more than the sight of the taxman walking through the door.

The tension in the air could have been cut with a butter knife. Not a single breath was heard as everyone held theirs to see what would happen. Darcy jumped down from the table she had been perched on. Addy gripped so hard onto a tankard you thought she would bend the metal. 

Pero stiffened next to you, the hand sitting on your thigh turning into a fist. You placed your hand over it, uncurling it and laying it on the table away from the hilt of his sword. Just in case he wanted to take drastic measures. You looked at him until his eyes found yours and you gave a small shake of your head. You did not want to make matters worse before tomorrow came. 

You stood from the table and went behind the countertop to take the tankard off Addy just as the taxman reached you. 

“It has been such an eventful day, I thought I would see what you could offer me.” His smile was smug and made you feel queasy. The thought of smashing the tankard over his head did pass you by, but you were going to be civil. You weren’t going to give him the satisfaction of seeing you crack. You were going to suggest you had everything under control. 

“This is a tavern. We have mead.” Your head snapped up towards the Irish lilt coming from behind the taxman. You hadn’t noticed Darcy walking over, too engrossed in your desperate thoughts to make this as quiet a night as possible. 

The taxman guffawed obnoxiously, not turning to give Darcy the attention she wanted. You frowned at her, hoping to convey that she was not helping. You dunked the tankard into the barrel, half filling it up with mead and placing it on the table in front of the taxman.

“I hope you’re going to pay for that.” You could have smacked Darcy. Her fear and tears from this morning were obviously spent and now all that was left was a burning anger at the man in front of her. 

The man had began his entrance with an amused smile and now it turned into something darker, angrier. Not pleased at being spoken to in such a way. He went into his purse and placed a coin on the countertop, nowhere near the amount you were charging everybody else. You knew Darcy was going to protest so you beat her to it.

“Thank you. If you are going to stay, do not cause trouble for my friends,” you asked, _pleaded_ , nodding towards the locals sitting at their tables. You didn’t want your last night in the tavern to be remembered for the wrong reasons. 

He didn’t reply. Just sat at the table nearest the door so he could watch everyone. You looked around and smiled. They quickly went back to their conversations and drinks. 

Darcy crossed her arms and looked at you questioningly. 

“Do not make this more difficult than it already is Darcy,” you warned her. You needed her to understand that it was just as hard for you not to give the man a piece of your mind. “Stay away from him. He will leave once he isn’t getting the reaction he wants.” And with that you moved to sit next to Pero once more. 

If he could shoot daggers from his eyes, the taxman would have been dead a thousand times over. You had to turn Pero’s face towards you to get his attention. You shook your head, suddenly feeling exhausted from the days events. 

You realised that this may be the last night you would see Pero. He saw your eyes become sad and distant as you remembered the first night you had met him. You remembered noticing his scar and then how often you had traced it in the week you had known him. The look of absolute contempt at finding out there were no more rooms, a look that would have scared any other woman but fascinated you. The sword at his side made you want to know his story. His accent roused intrigue when you found out his was a Spaniard, a country you never dreamed would touch you in this way. 

You wanted to know so much about this man and you had ran out of time. 

He kissed you out of your thoughts, his hands pulling you closer by your waist. He tilted his head and deepened the kiss, licking your bottom lip for access. You granted it and felt his tongue exploring your mouth as if it were the first time. 

You had to pull back for air, as much as you didn’t want to. He pressed his forehead to yours and roughly took your chin in his hand. 

“I promise, mi amor, all will be well.” You didn’t know what he meant. You didn’t care in that moment. You certainly didn’t think about how he couldn’t possibly promise something like that. 

“Thank you for everything,” you replied. It wasn’t quite a goodbye. But you hoped by thanking him he understood how you felt about your brief time with him. You didn’t know what other words you could say to convey how much he had filled your heart with a feathery lightness that made you feel on top of the world. In these pockets of your life, when it was just the two of you, when all around you was grim and turning into the stuff of nightmares, his presence made you feel at peace. 

Pero turned away from you to see the taxman about to leave. You took a hold of his hand and silently begged him not to do anything. 

“I will only talk to him,” he vowed. Maybe a little intimidation wouldn’t hurt. After all, you had no more cards to play yourself, shy of physical violence. You kissed his cheek and moved off the bench to let him out.

“Do not lay a hand on him,” you urged.

“I promise, _mi amor._ ”

-

Pero wished he had his cloak on. He could hide in the shadows a lot better if he had a hood to pull up to cover his face. His skills never quite lay in sneaking around. He was good at creating a commotion to start clashing blades with someone before swiftly finishing them off. He wasn’t as good at not bring attention to himself. 

He had promised you he would cause no harm to this man. So following him away from the tavern before confronting him would give him time to remember that and keep his anger inward instead of outward. 

“I can hear you.” Pero stopped. The taxman turned to face him. Pero had seen him a few times walking into the Lord’s manor. The first time he had noticed him, he had looked Pero up and down with an expression one might have if they had tasted something sour. He had made a comment to the Lord about finding an Englishman to guard him because “that man’s loyalties cannot be trusted.” That was the first time Pero had wanted to attack the taxman.

He crossed his arms, noting the sword on Pero’s belt. 

“Are you going to kill me, Spaniard?” He asked with a hint of amusement in his voice. Pero thought of your beautiful face to calm him down. This man, with his tiny arms and belly fat with rich meats and sweet wines would be no match for Pero. He had cut down men double the size. Slain beasts this man had only heard of in fairy stories. He could probably squeeze the life out of him with just one hand. And it would hardly be a challenge to discard his body. No one would miss him. 

“Not today. But maybe tomorrow.” Pero growled loudly making the taxman nervously take a step back. “If you leave the girls at the tavern alone, I could maybe never bother you again.” His tone was deep and threatening and his hand rested on the hilt of his sword to demonstrate his point. 

The taxman laughed, a little nervous Pero was happy to note, but he knew he had the upper hand.

“I don’t believe you,” the taxman taunted. “You could run me through with that sword but you are not.” He was stalking closer towards Pero, like a hunter towards a deer. “I think your lady friend is pulling your strings.”

Pero shook with rage. He respected you too much to go against his word, break his promise to you. But he couldn’t let this pig of a man laugh at him in this way.

As quick as a flash of lightning, Pero reached behind him to the dagger hidden in the back of his belt, bringing it round to slice the taxman along the cheek. 

He gasped in shock and took several steps back, putting distance between him and Pero. He brought his hand shakily to his cheek and noted the blood on his fingertips. 

“I will not be so careful next time,” Pero warned. “You are a disgusting little man. You prey on the fears of the most vulnerable, those with the most to lose. And you think that makes you a man,” he spat. 

The taxman’s breaths were shaky, with both fear and anger. Pero liked that look on the man. 

“No,” the taxman shouted. “No, you think being a man is running from place to place, playing at being a soldier. When really you are nothing but a filthy murderer.” 

Pero shoved him backwards when he got too close, the force sending him to the ground. 

“You are not wrong.” Pero stormed over towards where he had fallen and straddled his hips. He gripped onto the front of his tunic with one hand, and placed the edge of the knife to his throat. “So why are you not begging for mercy right now?” 

The taxman clenched his teeth, refusing to bow down, despite the likelihood of being killed by this man. 

“What would you do if every man you were trying to kill turned around and asked you to leave them alone?”

Pero was confused for a moment. He was expecting the man underneath him to beg for his life, perhaps start crying for help. Not ask him questions. 

“I do not kill on purpose. It is my job-“

“Exactly!” The taxman interrupted. “It is your job. As this is my job. I work for the Lord and the Lord works for the King. We all answer to someone. And your lady has to answer to me because that is the way of the world.”

Pero understood. Of course he did. He had done things in his past that if it were by choice, he wouldn’t have done them. But when he was much younger and starting out as a mercenary, he couldn’t say no. 

He was a worse man than the taxman. He understood. But now he had somebody to care about. And he needed you to stay here, with your tavern and your girls so he knew exactly where to always come back to. He needed to know where you were safe and content and he would never have to worry for you again. 

He moved quickly to lift the knife away from the taxman’s neck, making him flinch. He would not kill this man tonight. He would keep his promise to you. 

But he needed to do _something_. He stood up and walked away with half a plan in mind for tomorrow.

-

You needed to do one last count before the night was over. Pero hadn’t returned through the front door before you closed up. You had hoped he would be back so you could bring him up to your room for one last night. You didn’t know how you would be able to sleep without his breathing next to you to lull you into your dreams. Although you doubted even that would get you to fall asleep tonight. 

You walked into your room, noting that the door was slightly ajar. Perhaps one of the girls had been in to use the bathtub one last time, but usually you would be able to smell the steam lingering in the room. You could smell nothing. 

You scanned the room until your eyes caught something shining in the moonlight. On your bed lay a mound of coins. 

Your brow furrowed in confusion. You placed the two pouches of coins you had brought up with you next to the new pile. At a glance you guessed the amount of coins on the bed would fill up the pouches, with some left over. 

Your breathing quickened as you racked your brain to try and work out who would do this. Did one of the locals sneak up and place these coins here? Surely not. They were struggling workers themselves. No more than bread makers and butchers, farmers and cheese sellers. Nothing special enough to be able to save up coins like this. 

You were determined to find out who it was when this mess with the taxman was over. But right now, you let yourself smile, hoping you wouldn’t have to pack a bag and run from your home. Not this week anyway.


	7. Part VII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The taxman arrives and Pero is nowhere to be seen.

You held a heavy pouch in each of your sweaty hands, shifting from one foot to the the other. You were restless and fearful that this wasn’t going to go the way you hoped. You couldn’t shake off the feeling of dread and you were making the girls nervous. 

Pero was nowhere to be seen. As he hadn’t come into your room last night you went down to his guest room first thing in the morning to see an empty bed that looked as though it hadn’t been slept in. You almost panicked thinking he had left for good but you saw that his bag was still sat on the bedside table. 

Despite finding the coins on your bed you weren’t able to sleep. You tossed and turned, your mind racing over the fact you had been saved by a stranger this one time, but you wouldn’t be so lucky the next time the taxman demanded money. 

You had worked yourself sick to scrape up the amount of coin you needed and it still wasn’t enough. You and your tavern would be in dire trouble the next tax day. 

You didn’t know when the taxman would arrive today. You hoped it would be in the morning, to get it out of the way, or more likely he would drag it out as long as possible, knowing how worked up and upset you would get. You were sure he would get a sick pleasure out of your discomfort. 

Addy cleared her throat from where she was stood by the fireplace. She looked frustrated, her eyebrows rising at your movements. You realised you were bothering her. You sighed and sat down at a table, placing the pouches in front of you and interlocking your fingers to stop them from tapping on the surface. 

Out of the corner of your eye you saw a timid figure peaking around the corner on the other side of the countertop. Gwen had come in from the kitchen. She had no cleaning or cooking to do, not knowing if you would be able to open up this evening. You smiled encouragingly. She only ever walked around the front of the tavern when it was closed. And even then it was rare. 

She shuffled over to stand next to Addy, her arm immediately going around Gwen’s shoulders. The sight made you confident that your girls could get through anything. They had done so on their own before they had met you, and they certainly would now that they all had each other. 

As soon as the sun had began to peak through the clouds you had rushed to their rooms and told them the news of the coins. The way their faces had lit up would be burned into your mind forever. You wished you could see them that happy all the time. You had to remind them that they were not out of the woods yet. That the taxman could not be trusted to keep his word and leave you be. You had watched with a pit in your stomach as their smiles faded. You urged them to continue with the plan; pack a small bag, be ready to run if they had no other choice. 

Addy and Gwen were holding onto their bags with the hands that weren’t clutching each other. Darcy ran into the room with her satchel strewn across the front of her body. She was too loud in the tense quiet of the room. She looked at you apologetically and perched herself on your table. 

It was then that you heard the faint sounds of horses whinnying and carriage wheels rolling over stone. They were getting louder and closer to you.

You caught Addy’s gaze, giving her a nod and a silent command; _Take care of Gwen_. She ushered her friend out of the room and towards the kitchen. 

“Stay with them,” you urged Darcy who had jumped off the table. “You need to be ready to run if this does not go well.”

You stood up and intended to walk towards the front door when Darcy caught your hands and turned you towards her.

“What about you?” She whispered, tears welling in her eyes. You smiled a watery smile and shook your head.

“Please Darcy, let me do the worrying. You must be brave.” You pulled her into a brief hug before shooing her away. 

You smoothed down the front of your dress, stood up straighter and waited for your fate to arrive. 

You had no doubt that you could be strong when you needed to be. But goodness how you wished you had Pero stood beside you. Just his presence made you feel as though you could move mountains with your bare hands. His confidence in you as a woman, as a tavern owner, as a guardian to your girls would have knocked you off your feet by now if he hadn’t also been a steadying hand to hold you up when you required it.

The three knocks on the door made you jump, despite expecting them. They were hard and quick, forceful and impatient. He was already trying to rile you up.

You took a deep breath, daring to look around you for what could be the last time. You could see the many faces, familiar and strange, who had sat at those tables, laughing so much their bellies hurt, eating pies so fast you thought they would throw up, drinking tankard after tankard and thanking you sincerely, flirting, jesting, singing, kissing their lovers, arguing with their friends. Everything went on in a tavern. And those hundreds of lives had been a part of your own, moment after moment since before you could remember. 

You unlocked the bolt at the top of the door, remembering how you had done just that to welcome Pero into your life. You would slap him if you ever saw him again. Wherever he was that was more important than this. Than you. You felt selfish. You were not his priority. He could not lose a day of work just to hold your hand through this. Especially when you always insisted that you could handle anything on your own. If you weren’t willing to accept help because of your stubbornness then this is what happens. You stand alone. 

You pried open the door and noticed the repugnant blackened teeth before anything else. They were on display through the obnoxious smirk he was wearing. He pulled his black leather gloves off slowly and waved them in the air around him. 

“Lovely day, isn’t it?” He chuckled at your lack of response. He nodded over your shoulder, indicating that he was waiting to be invited in. 

You were about to step aside before remembering the last time you had done that, you had to quell the vomit in your stomach at his smell. Instead you left the door open and motioned for him to follow you in. 

You went towards the table that had the pouches of coins. 

“Ooh, lovely,” he murmured when he caught sight of them. He was swatting the leather gloves against the palm of his hand, making an irritating _thwack_ noise every time. 

You held onto your last shred of dignity by not overreacting. You picked up the pouches and casually placed them over the gloves in his hand, making it impossible for him to make any more noises. 

“I am sure I do not have to remind you of the _consequences_ if you are one coin short, Miss.” His tone was slow and patronising, as though he were talking to a child, not a grown woman. 

“Yes,” you forced the word out through gritted teeth. “It is all there. But-“

His head shot up at that, eyebrows raised in amusement. 

“But…?”

“I cannot pay that amount every week. It just isn’t possible. Especially with the colder weather around the corner. I can pay the previous amount-“

He held up a hand too close to your face to stop you from talking. You leaned away and crossed your arms to create a barrier of sorts. He clicked his tongue at you. 

“All I am hearing is excuses for not abiding by the law of the land.”

“It is hardly fair to change the tax whenever you feel like it-“

Before you knew what was happening the taxman had stepped forward and backhanded you across the face. You stumbled backwards, only just managing to keep your balance. You were frozen in shock, head hanging down as you slowly registered what had just happened. Not even your father had ever touched you in such a way. 

Blinking away the teas, your hand shakily reached up to feel the spot that had been hit, your cheek burning hot under your hand and stinging like a bee sting. You swallowed the lump in your throat as you chanced a look at your abuser. 

He looked just as shocked as you. His breathing was heavy, eyes wide as he stared at the red patch he had created on your skin. 

You didn’t know whether to run or stand your ground. You were certain if you did try to run that your legs would buckle underneath you. You thought of the girls in the kitchen. You hoped more than anything in the world that they had not heard the slap in the silence of the tavern. At least if you stood your ground here you were a barrier between them and the taxman.

You lowered your hand to your side and tried to look defiant in the face of evil. 

The taxman saw your demeanour change and pulled himself together, standing up straighter and clearing his throat. 

“As I told your Spaniard last night, we all have to answer to someone, and you answer to me.” His voice was considerably quieter than it had been before, but no less chilling. “The taxes stay the same next week. If you cannot pay them, then you lose the tavern.”

You wanted to protest and shout that he was being unreasonable, that you would fight him every step of the way. But your cheek was getting hotter and it was giving you a headache and you just wanted to hug your girls and make sure they were safe. 

“You would lose money if there was no trade,” you stated, your voice faint. The fight was leaving you, but it hadn’t disappeared completely. 

“Then I will give it to someone who can handle it,” he replied without missing a beat. 

Your bottom lip was trembling, a mixture of physical and emotional pain. 

“This was my fathers and his fathers before him,” you pleaded desperately. There must be some humanity, a heart no matter how small, in this man. Did he truly not care for anyone but himself?

“Your father was a weak man!” The taxman shouted. You flinched, your eyes clenching shut at the sound, awaiting the tirade that was coming. “He should not have died, leaving you on your own with this place.” He had stepped closer to you, wagging a finger in your face. You could feel his warm spit on your quickly bruising cheek. “Or better yet, he should have had you married off. A husband could have fixed this mess that you have gotten yourself into.” 

You were struggling to hold in the tears that were threatening to fall and the sob that was creeping fast up your throat. Your hands were shaking where they were rigidly held to your side. You weren’t brave enough to open your eyes until you heard the stomping of his boots moving away. 

When you saw him opening the door you held your breath, praying that he would leave now. Not turn around, not offer a last retort. You needed to breathe before you dropped to the floor in exhaustion. 

But he didn’t move. He was frozen in the doorway. You were confused and scared, waiting for him to do something. What was he looking at? Why wouldn’t he leave you alone?

He turned only slightly, glancing at you over his shoulder. He grimaced. 

“What is the meaning of this?” He asked, not buying your confusion. He pushed the door open fully and stepped over the threshold.

You took small, careful steps until you could see where he had gone. You gasped.

It wasn’t the taxman that surprised you, it was the amount of people stood in front of your tavern. You recognised most of them; the stallholder that sold you salted meats, the husband and wife who made the mead, the cheese seller, the jewellery maker, even the resident clairvoyant and a handful of tavern whores from the town were all crowded together. There must have been a hundred townspeople, all looking very angry.

And at the front of the crowd was Pero. You smiled through the tears running down your face. He had his sword drawn and was leaning on it as he caught you walking out of the tavern. You suddenly felt no pain, no fear or misery. You only felt him and his eyes staring into yours and the fact he was so close to you that you could almost smell his musky, smoky scent. 

His face transformed into a murderous, thunderous glare when he saw your cheek. The breath caught in your throat as you anticipated his reaction. Would he kill a man in cold blood in front of all these people? That definitely wouldn’t stop him. Would they let him? You looked over to them and saw that the looks on their faces matched his. So probably. Could you forgive him? There is no doubt in your mind that you would. 

But you thought back to your own words to him not so long ago, when he had suggested killing the taxman for you. 

_“I could not ask you to do something like that for me.” When he went to object you placed your hand over his mouth. “I could not. And also, if you did that either the Lord would replace him with someone else, maybe even someone worse, or they would take more drastic measures than they already have.”_

The easiest path is not always the one that should be taken. No matter how much the taxman deserved it. 

However Pero had already made up his mind. He charged towards the taxman, forced him up against the wall of the tavern and placed the tip of his sword against his neck. He growled in his face, scaring the taxman so much he whimpered and had to grip onto Pero’s upper arms to steady himself. 

“Please, please do not kill me, I beg you,” he pleaded, a blubbering mess compared to the angry brute who had terrorised you only moments ago. 

“You think I should allow a man that would hurt a woman to live?” He asked it as though he were posing a genuine question. For all of his sins, Pero’s mother had brought him up the right way. And even as a mercenary, when sometimes he would have to deal a woman the same fate as her male comrades, he would only do so if she attacked him first. With everything the taxman had done to this town, it may be the way he treated you this morning that tipped Pero over the edge. 

The taxman had no response to him, even going as far as to look ashamed at his actions. Pero was filled with so much rage that he didn’t notice you walking over to him and placing a hand on his shoulder. He jumped, ready to push you away before realising it was you. 

His eyes softened, but he couldn’t tear them away from your bruise. You tried to steady your breathing before you spoke to him. You needed to be the calm voice of reason to his furious thoughts. The light to his dark. 

“I do not want you to hurt him.” You were soft spoken, hoping to speak to his heart not his head. You weren’t begging, but letting him know where you stood. 

He seemed to think over your words, and finally looked up into your eyes. You saw them shine with regret that he hadn’t been there to stop him. 

“He put his dirty hands on you.” You heard his voice crack and your heart broke for him. You could see the conflict going on in his mind. You had broken down his walls, made him care and feel for the first time in years. He was vulnerable, that much he found out with his talk with the taxman last night. That’s why he had spent all night knocking on doors and pleading your case. So it wasn’t just him standing up for you. He needed the strangers at his back so he didn’t feel so exposed and small coming here today. 

You smiled. You weren’t going to show how much the slap on the cheek had affected you. You needed to be brave for your mercenary. 

“We are better than him.” You would not sink to his level, and you didn’t want Pero sinking down that far either. 

Pero turned to the taxman whose breathing had returned to normal and was now trying to look less scared than he felt. He flinched as Pero took the blade away and sheathed it at his side. His hand replaced where the blade was however, to make a point that he shouldn’t feel safe just because the sword had gone. It would be just as easy to break his neck with one hand. 

“You are going to listen carefully.” He paused, and the taxman nodded his response, the sweat on his brow dripping down his face.

“We,” he nodded over his shoulder to bring attention to the crowd of people staring down the taxman, “will not stand for your bullying any longer.” Pero squeezed the hand that held his throat until the taxman gasped out a breath. “You will collect the taxes every week, but the cost will go back to what it was a week ago. And you will ask nicely, as a gentleman should.” 

He spoke evenly but firmly, as though placating a naughty child. You had never heard him speak so clearly. You wondered if he had rehearsed this speech all night. You would tease him about it later. 

The taxman looked reluctant to agree to the terms, despite the struggle to breathe. Pero sighed heavily and kicked at his shin. With a shout of pain he finally relented. 

“Fine!” He shouted, his teeth clenched in anger, his eyes shut in embarrassment. 

“You accept these terms?” 

“Yes I accept!” Pero let go of his throat and the taxman desperately gasped for breath like a fish out of water. 

There was a collective sigh of relief from the townspeople. Some looking satisfied at the treatment of the taxman, others, particularly the young women, looking gratefully in Pero’s direction. 

He came to stand next to you with a protective arm around your waist. The taxman finished his coughing fit to glare at you, the fury behind his eyes would have scared you if not for the man at your side, a steady presence to help you stand your ground. 

“And what do you suppose I tell the Lord?” He asked with a strained and croaky voice. 

Pero shrugged. “I am sure you can come up with something.”

“And what if I tell him what you did to me today, hmm? You would kill me?” He scoffed.

To your surprised, Pero chuckled wryly. He looked over your head to the townspeople that were muttering amongst themselves.

“Mis amigos,” he called out, gathering their attention. “Nothing out of the ordinary has happened here today has it?” You smiled as in unison they shook their heads and replied in the negative. 

The taxman looked aghast. Every bit of power he thought he was holding onto had slipped completely from his grasp. He had no more cards to play, and with that he turned to his carriage and opened the door.

He took one last look at you. “Your Spaniard,” he spat on the ground, “will leave you when he is bored of the same four walls of the tavern, the same grass beneath his feet.” He smirked. “The same woman underneath him. And then who will protect you?” He jumped into his carriage and slammed the door shut, the driver taking that as his cue to ride away. 

You felt Pero’s arms encircle your waist, bringing your bruise-free cheek to lean against his chest. The rise and fall immediately calmed your beating heart. You felt safe for the first time in days. 

You would not listen to the taxman’s words. After everything Pero had done for you, you trusted that you meant something to him. Something more than a warm bed and a means to an end. 

He may not be around forever, but you knew for as long as he stayed, you would have him by your side, through thick and thin.


	8. PartVIII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What will Pero choose?

The days following the incident were chaotic. Word had spread to everyone who wasn’t there to witness it that the taxman had gotten his ass kicked. You suddenly found yourself being stopped in the marketplace to retell the tale. Business owners thanked you for standing up to him, the children re-enacted the fighting with wooden swords and took liberties with your story ( _“I will slay you where you stand!”_ You had heard one little boy say to another). You knew by the time it reached other towns it would become a fairy tale, only a grain of truth left in it. 

You spent the time filling the tavern back up with mead and food. The former more than the latter as the majority of the town wanted to drink in your tavern, singing songs of the evil taxman, the kindhearted tavern owner and her heroic Spaniard. 

Every night you would laugh at Darcy dancing with different people by the warmth of the fireplace. She joined in with the singing and more than once you had to remind her to stop drinking the mead because _“this is still a tavern Darcy and we still need to make money.”_

Addy kept her head in the books, making fool proof plans to keep the coins coming when things had settled down and the spending scarce to save as much as possible. The whole affair had frightened her. That first night afterwards was restless and filled with nightmares of sailing the seas back to France. You made her rest the next day, reminding her that she would never have to go back to her home country if she didn’t want to. As long as there was breath in your body, she would always have you, with or without a tavern. Since then she has been keeping busy. 

Gwen has been opening up more. It had the opposite effect on her than Addy. She was feeling more positive than she had in a while. Seeing the townspeople come together to save the tavern lit a spark inside of her. She accompanied you on all of your trips to market, speaking up with the stallholders when usually she would only point to what she wanted and mumble a thank you. She had sat with you and Pero in the tavern one night, laughing at Darcy until there were tears in her eyes. You even caught a glimpse of her blushing at the blacksmith across the room. When things calmed down you would gently encourage her to talk to him.

As for Pero, he had been spending most of his waking hours at your side or in the tavern. He carried baskets of food from the market for you, fixed broken table legs, cleaned out the stables and brushed down horses when needed, and most importantly kept you warm at night. You knew he enjoyed your company and helping you in any way he could, but you suspect the reason for doing all these things was because he was a man that could not keep still.

He had stopped working for the Lord. He didn’t want to wait to be told to never show his face around town again so he took matters into his own hands. He had told you jokingly that he has happy to finally be able to sleep all day and have no responsibilities. But not since he was a child had he had a day of not working. He found it odd, especially when he watched you flitting from one place to another, always moving and talking and doing. He found himself catching up with you constantly. 

You were afraid every morning that there would be nothing more for him to do in this town and he would decide to leave for another. The last words the taxman had said to you had jarred with you when you had thought it over in the days after.

_“Your Spaniard will leave you when he is bored of the same four walls of the tavern, the same grass beneath his feet. The same woman underneath him.”_

He was taunting you. He wanted the words to leave doubts in your heart, you knew this. But Pero had told you stories from his travels, his face lighting up when he described the colourful towns, the tastier foods, the bigger opportunities for men like him. Where women did so much more than they could here and be respected for it. 

You sometimes wondered why he would stay here when there was so much elsewhere. England was damp and dark in the colder months, stuffy and too hot in the warmer months. The King held all the wealth leaving not much for anybody else. You were sure there were places that were kinder, with easier coin to make. 

You knew you would have to ask eventually. See where his head was at when it came to the two of you. Let him know that you were falling too deep to be able to climb back out without getting hurt if he decided this wasn’t what he wanted in the long run. You thought maybe he was waiting until the next tax day, to ensure that if he did leave, he would be leaving you in a safe situation. 

He was thoughtful like that. 

-

You hadn’t seen the taxman in seven days. You hoped he was staying away because he was afraid of Pero, but no one else in the town had seen him either. The atmosphere was a little tense when you opened the tavern for the night. You kept behind the countertop for the time being; you were worried that the incident last week may have emboldened people to take things too far. 

You didn’t want a fight to erupt. You hadn’t heard anything from the Lord in regards to the tax demands you and the townspeople had made. On the one hand he wouldn’t want to have to make an example of the entire town for disobedience, but on the other hand he couldn’t have you defying him every time you had a problem with his rules. If the townspeople got too cocky, there would be dire consequences. 

Pero was sat closest to the door, both to make his presence known to the taxman if he arrived and to be ready to break people up if it came to it. 

A few hours after opening was when it happened. A man dressed head to toe in black leather strode into the tavern. His boots were heavy against the stone floor, his greasy, black hair hung in waves down to his shoulders. The evenings were cold now but he wore no cloak. A pleasant smile and kind eyes greeted you. 

“You must be the owner of this tavern,” he spoke softly as he reached across the countertop to shake your hand. 

The tavern had grown quiet, only a few questioning murmurs. You politely shook his hand and saw out of the corner of your eye that Pero had moved to protectively perch on the table closest to you. 

“My name is Sebastian. I am to be the new taxman around here.” You looked baffled. Where was the other taxman? Did he run scared of what had happened? Had he moved on to somewhere else?

Sebastian saw your confusion and huffed a laugh. 

“Do not worry, the other man will not bother you again.” There was an edge to his tone, not a warning or a threat, but he sounded uncomfortable when he said that, as though he feared the same fate falling on his head.

“The Lord has decided to accept your terms. You will pay the coins you have become accustomed to, starting from today if that is convenient?” 

You nodded and looked over to Addy, motioning for her to fetch a pouch from upstairs. You looked at Pero who was staring at the new taxman. He didn’t seem to notice your lover, thankfully. Sebastian seemed like a fair man, a whole lot better than the previous taxman so far. 

“Thank the Lord for us. We never expected things to end how it did. But the changes in the coin were almost double what we had been used to and everybody in town was struggling,” you explained. You didn’t want to have to fight for your livelihood again. You only wanted peace and stability for your girls, and to keep the tavern prospering as your father had. And for those you had to answer to to be reasonable. 

Sebastian smiled, nodding understandably. “I know my predecessor was a difficult man to get along with. I hope to be different.”

At that moment Addy came over to you with a pouch of coins. You placed it on the countertop in front of Sebastian and gave him a diplomatic smile. 

He turned and saw that everyone in the tavern was listening intently to your conversation. Their eyes bore into Sebastian’s but he took it in his stride. He was obviously used to being the most disliked man in town simply because of his job. 

He chuckled, picked up the pouch and nodded his thanks before leaving the tavern. 

“That was… unexpected.” You laughed heartily at Pero’s words, breaking the silence of the room. You had never felt so relieved. You finally felt hopeful that things were getting better. 

You moved to where Pero was still perched and wrapped your arms around his waist. He immediately held you close to his body, placing a kiss to the top of your head. Your grin was hurting your cheeks but you didn’t care. The bruise from the week before had faded, barely noticeable unless you were really looking, and the town around you seemed to be healing at the same pace. 

“ _Mi amor,_ ” Pero whispered into your hair. You hummed in response and realised that this was it. It was in this moment that you needed to have your talk. The future looked promising and you had to push Pero into making a decision. 

You pulled back slightly and looked at him. He was smiling at you, a pleasant smile full of pride and admiration for you. He leaned down to run the tip of his nose against yours. 

“Stay,” was all you could say. You had a hundred questions you needed answers to, just as many uncertainties you wanted to be certain of. But when it came down to it, you just wanted him to stay.

“ _Si, mi amor_ ,” was his reply. “I will stay with you.” His voice was so soft in the noise of the room you were in, but you felt every word. You finally closed the gap and pressed your lips to his. It wasn’t rushed, or even particularly passionate. It was simple and quiet and still. Because you had time now. You had all the time in the world to kiss him with fervour, in the small safe haven you had built around you.


	9. To Have And To Hold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The conclusion.

The bed creaks under your ministrations. Your fingernails drag white marks down Pero’s warm, sweaty chest, catching his nipples along the way, making him hiss. He grips onto your hips tighter, holding you still as he pistons his hips up, his cock drilling deeper into your cunt. Head tilting back, you gasp out his name, hands turning into fists against his chest as you get closer to your high. 

One of his hands finds its way down to your clit, his hips slowing as he concentrates on making you come. 

“Let go, _mi amor_ ,” his voice is deep, rough and it goes straight to your core like a flash of lightning. His fingers pinch and rub at your clit as you ground down on his cock one last time, reaching your peak with a strangled cry. 

Pero doesn’t give you time to come back to your senses before he is switching your positions, head resting in the crook of your neck and hands grabbing your waist for leverage. He rocks into you, grunting in Spanish between nibbling on the skin of your neck. Your legs hook around his back, pulling him into you deeper.

“Pero, please,” your desperate pleas are all it takes for his hips to stutter and stop as he releases inside of you. 

Your hands come up to pull his face away from your neck. He gives you a shy smile, kissing every inch of your features. Your giggling spurs him on to leave a trail down your neck to your collar bone.

“You are so beautiful, _mi querida_ ,” he whispers it so softly you would have missed it if you hadn’t been so close to him. You run your fingers through his already messy hair, rubbing small circles into his scalp. You wonder if you are the luckiest woman in the world, lying underneath the man you love, not a care in the world but to make him feel relaxed and loved, just as he makes you feel. 

He reluctantly pulls out of you with a groan and lies down beside you. You watch his chest rise and fall, the beads of sweat glistening in the moonlight that lights up your bedroom. Our bedroom, you think, and you can’t help the grin forming on your lips. 

He catches your smile, reaching over to run a finger delicately along your lips. Before he can question it, you take the blanket from the bottom of the bed and drape it over the two of you, lying down on your side to face Pero. 

When you catch a glimpse of his sword lying sheathed on the box at the bottom of your bed, you’re reminded he will be leaving you in the morning. He was lucky enough to have found work opportunities around the country, escorting Lords across county borders or protecting rich men’s unmarried daughters in castles. 

He was never gone for more than a few weeks at a time, but it still felt like a knife to the heart when you would have to trudge up to your room after a long evening of work to sleep in a cold, unwelcoming bed on your own. He would send letters when he could, but it was never enough for you. Not when you had hoped things would be different. 

It had been four months since he had promised to stay with you. And you had thought it would mean him finding work closer to you, living with you in domestic bliss like the married couples you saw in the town. 

Not that you ever thought Pero would marry you. You had never discussed it, and you didn’t mind. The two of you got the odd look from older residents, people who had watched you grow up from a small girl who were a little judgemental when it came to yours and Pero’s living arrangement. But one pointed look from the Spaniard and they soon closed their mouths. You were happy being as you were.

But there was an irritating devil on your shoulder that you would listen to sometimes, telling you that the lack of commitment meant something. And that ‘something’ may be that he wasn’t as serious about building a relationship with you as you initially thought. 

He had never told you outright but you had guessed that this was his first serious relationship. He had recounted to you his travels, moving from country to country in search of riches. That he had only ever sought out coin, family had never been something he desired. That catching feelings for you had been unexpected, a happy accident, but something he was willing to make work if you could only be patient with him.

And of course you would be patient. You were nearing an age where most women were settled into marriage with a few children at least. So the fact there was a man who cared for you enough to try and change his life around to be with you was a miracle you would not dismiss so quickly.

You had told yourself years ago that you were nearing the time in your life where it would be impossible to find anyone to marry you. And you were genuinely content with that thought. You would much rather be a spinster than marry a man you did not love. 

But you liked certainty, and answers, and the knowledge that this thing you had with Pero wouldn’t burn to ash in the near future because it wasn’t meant to be. 

Pero pulls you into his side, arranging you so that your head lay on his shoulder, your arm resting across his chest.

“You think too much,” he mused tiredly, a yawn escaping him as he fought to stay awake for you. 

“How long will you be gone this time?” You enquired, trying to sound nonchalant but it must have come out differently because Pero huffed and squeezed you tighter to his side.

“I never know for sure. Hopefully not too long.”

“Is there no work in the town?” You tread carefully, knowing Pero wasn’t much of a talker at the best of times. But if he thought you were complaining to him about his choices he would shut off completely from the conversation. 

“I would not be travelling a hundred miles north if there was work right here.” You tilted your head up to see his facial expression, but he was giving nothing away. His eyes were closed, looking suspiciously relaxed. The only indication that he was awake being a finger trailing up and down your spine.

“Why do you need the coin from this work?” He raised an eyebrow at that, an amused look overcame his face as he cautiously opened his eyes. 

“To live,” he replied, as though you had asked the most stupid question he had ever heard. 

This made you laugh and roll your eyes. “You live here.”

“And eat-“

“You eat Gwen’s pies-“

“I do not want to carry on living and eating here without giving you something in return.”

It was your turn to raise an eyebrow, more suggestively than his was. He launched forward and claimed your lips, rolling you on top of him, chest to chest.

“ _Mi amor_ , I am no longer a guest in your home, I understand that. But it does not sit right with me if I do not help in some way.”

You tenderly bit at his bottom lip as you pondered this. You understood that he must feel lesser sometimes when you did all the work and brought in the coin to pay the taxes. Not that Pero would ever want you to do anything else. But he was used to working so hard his hands blistered, being so busy he could only sleep from sheer exhaustion. He wanted you to be proud to have him by your side, no matter how many times you assured him that you were already proud to call him yours.

“You can always work with me Pero.”

“I have fixed every chair and beam in the tavern. There is nothing more for me to do.”

“There is always something-“

He interrupted you by sighing heavily. You had said too much. But there was still so much more you wanted to say, to ask how the two of you could possibly make this work if he spent half the time in other parts of the country? Especially when there was no need for him to do so. 

You rolled off until your back was facing him. If he was going to be petty enough not to listen to you then you might as well leave it there for the night. 

You heard him shuffle around before you felt his body press against yours, his arm coming around to pull your back flush to his chest. 

“I promise to talk more about this when I come back,” he mutters into your hair.

_I will hold you to that promise_ , you thought. But for now, you would relish in the feel of being held in his arms as tiredness overcame you. 

-

In the subsequent weeks you had tried to find comfort in your tavern work rather than fixate on the optimistic idea of Pero returning early. You spent more time with your girls, checking in when you hadn’t seen them in a while, just to ensure there were no lasting effects from the whole debacle with the former taxman. 

Addy was feeling more comfortable and relaxed now there was less drama in the tavern. You still only saw her when she was working, hardly taking any time for herself, as usual, but you had caught her jesting with Darcy by the light of the fireplace more often than not, and she was opening up to you in a way she never had before.

Out of all of your girls you knew the least about Addy’s past. You were curious, of course. What would make a young maiden flee overseas? One who could read and write in two languages but only had a set of clothes and no coins to her name when she arrived? 

She had started telling you stories of when she was a child, eating at tables big enough to fill a room the size of the whole tavern, and having a favourite nursemaid who would sneak her sweet treats when her parents weren’t around to notice. Usually happy memories, and never specific details of who she was, but it was enough for you to put the pieces together to work out that she had grew up in a wealthy family. 

You contemplated this as you looked over to her, wavy brown hair freely cascading over her left shoulder as she twisted the ends into small knots. She was walking alongside you in the market, a woven basket in the crook of her elbow as she surveyed the various goods on display. 

Her eyes flickered over to the sounds of hens clucking and she turned to you, wide eyed.

“ _Mon amie_ , before I forget,” she began, pointing towards the hens. “We need eggs.”

You nodded in understanding. A fox had dug its way into your henhouse a week ago, despite Pero having made the house himself before he left, and promising you it was “indestructible”. When he came back you would have to see if his understanding of the English word was the same in his native tongue, because you suspected it wasn’t. 

“Are you willing to carry one home?” You asked. She nods enthusiastically, determined to face the challenge of the flighty bird. 

After negotiating a fair price, each of you had a hen in your baskets and you were strolling back to the tavern at a leisurely pace. You wanted to make the most of this time to properly talk with Addy, alone, without the interruptions of an excitable Darcy or a hovering Pero.

“So, how are you Addy?” She raised an eyebrow inquisitively in your direction. She was too clever not to suspect an ulterior motive. It wasn’t that you wanted something, you weren’t prodding for information specifically, but all she did was work and you needed to know she was happy as she was. 

“I have never been as happy as I am now, being pecked at by a hen.” The arm that was holding the basket was, as she said, being nibbled on by her hen. Fortunately there was at least a layer of sleeve to add a small amount of protection. “I think you gave me the naughty one on purpose.” The corner of her lips twitched up before she could stop it and you laughed at her attempts at being cross with you. 

“I thought you could handle the challenge,” your amused look only served to make her roll her eyes at you. You fell into a comfortable silence, and you thought that was the end of your conversation when you saw her biting at her bottom lip in thought. “What is it?” You asked softly.

“I love working at the tavern,” she began, and it seemed as though she was going to continue but she didn’t. You nudged her in the side, urging her to keep talking to you. If she wasn’t happy you wanted to know. You didn’t know what you could do about it, unless you took over her bookkeeping duties and allowed her more time at the front of the tavern with Darcy. Or maybe she wanted to spend more time with Gwen? The two had always been close, both being quiet individuals. And Addy would sometimes help make pastries and stews in the kitchen.

“I feel as though my life has come to a stop.” You weren’t quite sure what she meant by that, so you waited patiently (which did not come naturally to you) for her to explain. She kept wetting her lips and swallowing the lump in her throat. The problem wasn’t that she thought you would be mad, but she couldn’t always work out how to say what she was thinking. Whether it was translating it to English or simply because she was a thinker more than a talker, you weren’t sure. You realised she was a lot like Pero in that way. 

“I watch you and Pero sometimes. And seeing you so happy makes me so happy, mon amie. But I wish I had that too. And even Gwen has been taking walks with Thomas. And it is so sweet to see her smiling all the time.” 

You were delighted when Gwen had come to you the other month saying she liked the local blacksmith and wanted you to help her talk to him. They had been sweet on one another for so long yet neither person had said a single word. You gently encouraged her to serve him a warm meat pie one night, and now you couldn’t get her to talk about anything other than Thomas. 

You paused just outside the tavern door and leaned against it, facing Addy. You didn’t want to enter your home until you had finished this conversation. You didn’t want to risk her finding something to busy herself with and avoid what needed to be said. 

“You are not happy?” You asked, trying to grasp an understanding of what she was trying to tell you.

“I am!” She insists, trying a little too hard to convince you. She shook her head, clearly frustrated with herself at this point. The hen had stopped pecking at her sleeve for now, and your hen had been sitting peacefully in your basket the entire time.

“I am happy, how could I not be? But I am afraid. Afraid of outgrowing my usefulness here. I only have you and you have Pero and the tavern. I suppose what I am trying to say is, it would be nice to have something for myself. That is only mine.” She says that last bit in a whisper and you want to rush over and hold her to your chest like a mother comforting her babe when they are crying. 

But you don’t want to upset the hens in their baskets so instead you turn to open the front door and motion for her to follow you inside. 

“Come. We have a lot to do to secure the hens once more. And then I will help you find something that it yours,” you promised. 

She smiles then, a genuine smile that shows you a weight has been lifted off her shoulders, if only a little. You didn’t have a solution for Addy just yet, but you were willing to work with her towards one.

-

Gwen had been making pies since she could walk, or that was what she told you. Her mother taught her how to squash the ingredients in her hand until it formed into a whole piece of dough when she could sit cross legged on the cold stone floor of their hut. When she could reach the top of the table they usually ate dinner at, she learned to roll the pastry out into a circle with a wooden roller. And when she could be trusted not to cut herself, around four or five years, her mother let her chop the vegetables into chunks. She could probably do it with her eyes closed.

Or at least she could do it whilst staring at the brick wall, daydreaming about her sweetheart. 

You stood in the doorway of the kitchen, had been there for some moments, observing the woman in front of you. Her face was lit up in awe, you were sure her smile would hurt her cheeks soon enough. You didn’t want to interrupt but she wasn’t going to notice you standing there any time soon, so needs must. 

You softly cleared your throat, taking note of the knife in her hand and not wanting to scare her. She had always been a timid person, akin to a deer in a forest of poachers. But her time with Darcy and Addy had boosted her confidence over the past couple of years and she was a lot less jumpy now than she had been when she first started working in the tavern.

She heard your presence, her embarrassment evident by the way she immediately cast her eyes down to the meat she was slicing on the counter against the back wall, turning her back to you. 

You refrained from laughing at her and took a seat at the table in the middle of the room. 

“Gwen,” you began. She acknowledged you with nothing but a hum. You smirked at her shyness. “Have you seen Thomas lately?” She hadn’t spoken to you about him yet. You sometimes felt as though you were the mother to these girls, not only because you protected them and gave them a home, but because they didn’t always confide in you the way you hoped they would. Almost as though they thought you would embarrass them, or make a fuss. 

“He is at the blacksmith’s shop most days so I don’t get to see him as much as I would like.” She was refreshingly honest for someone who rarely divulged her desires. But you could tell this upset her, whether it was the way her voice dipped lower towards the end or by the way she paused in her pie making to talk. 

“You could always ask us to help you.” You weren’t a tyrant. If Gwen wanted to see more of this Thomas man then you would find a way to make it happen. You only ever want your girls to be happy, even if that isn’t with you. 

And that did hurt you a little. Not because you wanted Gwen all to yourself, you would happily sacrifice a small part of your life to allow Gwen to go off and be happy with someone. But Gwen was particularly special to you. She had been your first true friend. Being of similar age you had gravitated towards one another when she came to work in the tavern as a young girl. 

Your father had always been kind towards Gwen, even treating her as another daughter. Whilst she did most of the cooking with the help of your father, you worked together to clean the tankards, wipe the tables, sweep the floor. You bonded over these duties, turning them into games and competitions, seeing how shiny you could make the pans or how many wooden logs you could carry to the fireplace without dropping them. 

You had never imagined the tavern without Gwen in it. 

“There is always so much food to prepare, and I don’t mind at all.” Gwen was never one to complain, especially if it were to do something completely selfish. You wanted her to be a little more selfish when it came to love though. You weren’t going to let it slip from her fingertips. 

“If you want to meet with Thomas for the evening, all you have to do is ask. We will all work a little harder to prepare everything beforehand-“

“But if you need more food cooked later on-“

“I am sure I can put a pie in the oven, Gwen.” You narrow your eyes at her excuses, refusing to back down from the argument. She knew you wouldn’t drop it until she agreed. She finally turned around to face you, giving you a small nod. 

You beamed, proud of yourself. Now you just had to make sure she actually did spend an evening with Thomas. 

“Do you-“ Gwen paused, her fingers playing with the bottom of her dirty apron, refusing to meet your stare. “Do you like him?”

Your eyes widened in surprise. You didn’t know him that well. He had come into the tavern a few times before he had met Gwen, usually with his father. He had been nothing but polite in asking for food from you, didn’t talk more than that if he could help it. On the face of it, he and Gwen were perfect for one another. 

“He seems nice,” you shrugged, hopefully conveying that you couldn’t judge someone you hardly knew. “More importantly, how do you feel about him?”

Her smile grew instantly. You had no doubt about how he made her feel. It sent a sharp pang to your heart that you had never made her as happy as that in all the time you had known her. You took a deep breath, trying to disperse those thoughts. It was a completely different kind of love she had for you, you couldn’t compare the two. 

“I think I-“ she stopped herself from saying the word, her eyes still downcast, as though the notion of feeling love was silly, childish. You knew those feelings. You still couldn’t bring yourself to tell Pero just how strongly you felt love towards him. Scared to be so vulnerable, to hold your heart in your hand and hand it over to another in the hope they wouldn’t crush it along with any hope of a future together. 

“You love him,” you stated, because you knew she wouldn’t be able to say it out loud. Her answering sigh, the drop of her shoulders as she admitted to you the truth was all that she needed to say. 

“He asked me about marrying him.” She was looking at you intently, wanting a reaction, good or bad, to guide her on what to do. She wasn’t asking permission, rather looking to you to help her decide what the right thing is. But there was no right or wrong. Not in a world where daughters were married off to men they had never met. Even if Gwen had only started talking to Thomas a few months ago, if it felt right then surely that was all the answer she needed?

“What did you say?”

“I have always wanted to marry a man I love.” You leaned forward on the table and she took that as her cue to sit in the chair opposite you. 

“Then it sounds as though we have a wedding in the future.”

“But what about-“, Gwen rubbed her lips together in thought, a frown creasing her brow as she looked around at the kitchen you were in. “He does not mind that I work here. But could I still-?”

“Gwen,” you clicked your tongue, taking her hands in each of yours. “Do you think I would not allow you to work here because you are married?”

“No, but how would it work?”

“Nothing has to change.”

“What about children?”

“Have as many as you want!” You laughed, trying to break the tension that had crept into the conversation. She didn’t laugh with you but she did sigh in exasperation at you. 

“What I mean is,” you squeezed her hands to pull her attention back to you, “we will deal with that when we get to it. But if he does not mind you working here, then you will continue to do so. In fact, I think I have somewhat of a solution anyway.”

You thought back to the other day when Addy had spoken to you about her feelings of wanting more out of life at the tavern. Maybe by giving her more responsibility, a different kind of responsibility, it would ease the burden on Gwen in the future. 

“I was thinking of helping to set Addy up with a stall in the marketplace, maybe three days a week. She has a good head on her, and I think she is becoming bored in the tavern. If we sell less food here, and more at market, you won’t need to work as much in the kitchen.” 

You would still need to plan it out, have Gwen work more in the day and less in the evenings so she can go home to her husband. You would need to prepare Addy for cooking more and bookkeeping less, but if it was what they wanted then you were determined to make it work. 

Gwen looked almost convinced, but she hadn’t outright disagreed with you. You let go of her hands and leant back in your chair, crossing your arms. 

“So,” you began, a cheeky glint in your eye whilst Gwen’s eyes widened in panic before you had even spoken. “Children…”

-

You lifted the stained parchment up to your nose and breathed in. Maybe it was your imagination, but you could almost smell his musky, smoky natural scent. You noticed a dirty fingerprint mark in the corner. It probably wasn’t even his print, but that of the messenger who had delivered it to you, but you still fixated on that mark.

Pero’s letter had been short but sweet. 

I will see you before Winters end, mi querida 

He had even forgotten to sign his name. He would be in the comfort of your arms and the safety of your tavern within two weeks and you could hardly wait. 

That hadn’t been the only letter to arrive this morning. You made your way up to the room that Addy and Darcy shared. 

You had seen Addy practicing pastry making in the kitchen with Gwen as you walked past. She had been eagerly memorising recipes and techniques ready for her new market stall. She was thrilled at the idea you had proposed, and Gwen was keen to help her as much as possible. 

You knocked on the door before pushing it open. Darcy was sat on her bed, plaiting her red hair over one shoulder when she smiled at the sight of you.

“A letter arrived for you.” You handed her the letter, a look of confusion on her face. She never usually received letters, after all no one was supposed to know she was here. 

You took a seat next to her, taking the ribbon out of her hand to help tie the end of her hair whilst she read the letter. 

You wanted to read the letter with her, but you didn’t want to invade her privacy until she was ready to confide in you. Instead you took a peak at her facial expressions as she read. She gasped at something, her frown deepening from confusion to a hint of fear. 

You sat back and watched as her hands fisted the parchment. It was dirtier than the letter Pero had sent you. You suspected it had come from further away. 

She finally looked at you, swallowing the lump in her throat. 

“It is from my sister. She is with child.” She spoke it matter-of-factly, hardly any emotion in her voice, surprisingly calm for someone who had cut all contact with her family when she sailed away from Ireland nearly two years ago. 

“How did she know to send the letter here?” You asked carefully. If her sister knew she was here, would her family come looking for her? You needed to know, to be ready to have her back if there was any trouble. But she shook her head, easing your worries a little.

“It was my sister who helped find a boat for me to leave on. I trust her not to tell the rest of my family.” You nodded in understanding. 

“What else did she say?”

Darcy took a deep breath, re-reading the letter. You imagine she will be doing that over and over for the rest of the day.

“She asks that I join her for the birth.”

“Will you go?” You realise you probably interrupted her, and your voice had definitely raised in pitch. You felt your heart pumping faster at the idea of Darcy travelling back to the family who had treated her so terribly, and getting caught up in the trouble yet again. 

“I don’t want to,” but it wasn’t the ‘no’ you hoped she would respond with. You fell into an uncomfortable silence whilst you thought of what to say. You wanted to tell her you would support her whatever she chose, that you would do anything to ensure a safe journey and return, you would go so far as to beg Pero to accompany her for protection. But you couldn’t make those choices for her. 

“You don’t have to do anything Darcy,” you assured her the best you could. 

“I don’t want to.” She sounded decisive, more determined to do what she wanted to do. “I did not travel all this way to go all the way back.”

You hummed, linking your arm with hers. 

“Her name is Orla,” she explained in a quiet voice. “She is only a year older than me. She had married Colin not long before I left. It was arranged but she was lucky I guess, he is a really kind man.” She was picking at the skin along her nails as she reminisced. You reached over and planted your free hand on top of hers.

“I think life is all about luck, Darcy.”

“I agree. They will be so happy with their new babe.” The sadness in her voice was obvious. It sounded wrong on Darcy. She was usually the light of the tavern, bringing everybody into her sunshine, through her musical laughter, her impromptu dancing by the fireplace, her tight hugs that moulded the two of you into one. 

You had seen her scared and tearful during the trouble with the taxman, but you could always remind her to be hopeful and to trust in you. But you felt helpless here. There was no solution you could present to her, there was nothing you could do to fix sadness other than being a hand to hold to keep her grounded.

“This is not forever. You can see them in the future. They can come here and visit you and stay in the guest rooms. You will see their children.” 

“It is funny to think if she had not helped me escape, I would probably have children of my own now.” 

You nodded solemnly. She probably would have had one, maybe two by now. And they would have been beautiful babes with chubby cheeks and a shock of her red hair, but they wouldn’t have been born out of love. 

“There is no point wondering what could have been. And anyway, you will have plenty of children to care for soon enough.”

Darcy’s eyes widened, glancing down to your stomach and you realised what you had insinuated. You gasped and smacked her gently on the arm. “Not me!” She covered her mouth, but not quickly enough to hide her laughter. 

“No I mean Gwen. She is ready to marry Thomas and have a houseful of children.” You rolled your eyes at the idea. You could almost picture the image of little Gwens running around the tavern, getting under Pero’s feet, his grumbles only halfhearted as he plucked their mucky fingers off freshly cleaned tables. 

And you realised you were imaging Pero around children. You had never thought about having children with him before. Especially as the lives you lead would hardly allow for children. You worked too hard and too much to find time for children, and how could Pero be a father if he wasn’t always here? 

You thought about the bowl of grounded herbs and seeds you ingest every time you and Pero spent the night together. An ancient mixture passed down in whispers from mothers and wise women to prevent being with child. 

Maybe Gwen’s children would be enough to satisfy the warm but terrifying feeling in the pit of your stomach when you thought about having Pero’s babies. 

You cleared your throat and unwound your arm from Darcy’s. She looked lighter now she had laughed, but the tinge of sorrow was still in her eyes. You placed a gentle kiss on her forehead. 

“It will all be alright,” you promised her. And you would make sure of it. 

-

You felt tiny wet kisses on the back of your neck, followed by thick, calloused fingers crawling along your upper arm. You would have thrown a punch if you hadn’t heard the compliments in a very distinct Spanish accent being whispered against your ear lobe. 

You had never woken up so quickly. You rolled onto your back, opening your eyes to see your Pero lying next to you, head resting on a closed fist, his other hand caressing you wherever he could reach. 

“I thought you would not be back for at least another week.” You brought his face down to kiss him in haste, before continuing your kisses across his cheek towards his ear.

“I thought so too. Wanted to come home.” Your breathing stuttered. He had never referred to the tavern as home before. Your heart soared at the idea of him feeling at home here, with you. 

You nibbled along his jaw. He hissed, his hand on you gripping harshly onto your hip. You were wearing your nightdress but you still felt his thumb digging into your bone, just this side of painful. 

“I have not stopped thinking about you, _mi hermosa chica_.” He pushes you down onto the bed as he climbs on top of you, straddling your hips. 

He kisses down your neck, sucking marks along the way. You start to unbuckle the leather jacket he is wearing, pushing it off his shoulders to be tossed onto the floor. He lifts his head from your neck long enough to discard his tunic also. 

He captures your lips in a heated kiss, licking into your mouth with a fervour. Your hands pinched and scraped at the skin of his shoulders, chest, back, wherever you could get to. 

He ran his hands down the length of you until he reached your thighs, grabbing handfuls of fabric and pulling it up. You pulled away from his lips to sit up, helping him take off your nightdress. 

He growled when he saw your nakedness in front of him. You had lost count the amount of times he had seen your bare flesh, but he looked just as in awe the first time as he does now. His dark, hungry eyes made you shiver in anticipation. 

“I can be gentle, if you want me to.” His softness made you whimper. But you could see he wanted to ravage you. Almost six weeks of no contact, no touches, soft or hard, has made him greedy for you. 

You glanced down to see his cock straining in his tight breeches, It gave you a thrill to know he was awaiting your permission before making any move, despite his desperation.

“No. I don’t want you to be gentle.” The dangerous smirk he gave you made you clench down on nothing. 

He was swift at turning you onto your stomach, pulling your hips up to place a pillow underneath you. You went to pull yourself up onto your hands and knees but he stopped you with a hand at the back of your neck.

“Stay down,” he growled, and you submitted with a high pitched mewl. You could hear him shucking off his boots and breeches, and you widened your legs silently, lest he tell you off again. 

You jumped at the feeling of a finger being dragged along your folds, spreading your lips as he did. He held you in place with a hand on the small of your back, pressing just enough so you were rendered immobile.

He collected your juices, slipping a finger inside of you to gather more. Your mouth was already open from panting out breaths when you felt his finger pull out of you and push into your mouth, catching on your tongue, moving in and out. You closed your lips around the digit, your tongue cleaning yourself off him, your cheeks hollowed as you sucked. 

You would dream of the sound of the groan it elicited from Pero, it was so sweet. 

He ripped his finger out of your mouth to push back into your cunt, pulling out to push two in, then three. Your hands fisted the blankets and you tried to buck your hips back but his other hand forced you to stay where you were. His thrusts were fast, more to prepare than give you pleasure.

“I would touch myself to the thought of you every night.” You keened at his words, spreading your legs as wide as they would go, hoping to show him how much you needed him. “You make me crazy, _hermosa_.” 

“Pero please,” you whined. He pulled his finger out and without pause he was pushing his length into you, slowly, inch by inch. 

You bit your lip, holding in the loud moan you had wanted to scream. Once he was seated inside you, you could hear his heavy breathing and feel his large hands smoothing the skin of your back. 

“ _Mi amor_?” You had been suspiciously quiet, adjusting to his size after several weeks without him and breathing through the intense feelings of wanting all of him, hard and deep and rough but also not wanting it to end any time soon.

He bent over your back to kiss behind your ear, sucking at the sensitive skin. You gave a silent cry, clenching around him, making him bite down.

“Move, please,” you begged. You couldn’t stand the stillness any longer.

He sat back up on his knees, taking your wrists up with him to hold in one hand against your back. He pulled himself out until just the tip of his cock was left inside of you, then sharply thrust back in. You cried out, the pillow underneath you and your wrists held behind your back had him hitting a spot inside of you that he never had before. 

You tilted your head down to bite down on a mouthful of blanket, muffling your groans of pleasure. 

Pero’s pace was punishing, harsh and fast, making up for time spent too far away from you. His free hand was grabbing handfuls of your ass cheek, sometimes slapping, other times grabbing. 

You could feel that familiar pull in your stomach, your cunt clenching impossibly harder around his cock.

“Pero, I’m so close,” you sobbed. He snaked his hand around to rub at your clit, his fingers meeting the pace of his hips.

You pushed back to meet his thrusts, feeling the pleasure build. Your legs shook, body arched and you cried out his name as you reached your peak. 

He removed his fingers from your clit and placed his hand on your hip for better leverage as he continued to chase his own high. 

You knew he was close when he started to slow down, punching harder, deeper rather than faster. You rolled your hips, angling a little higher and he came to a stop. He let out a strangled cry of your name and you felt him shake as he released inside of you. 

“Pero,” you whispered hoarsely. No matter how blissed out or exhausted he was, he always stopped everything to come to you when you called, and now was no different. He quickly pulled out of you, lying next to you and moving the hair from your face to get a better view of you.

“I am here.”

You reached up to stroke at the scruff of hair on his cheek. He must have shaved regularly whilst away, but he had seemingly let it grow for a few days. You like the feel of it between your fingers, but especially on your thighs. The thought made you clench again. 

“I will collect water for us to bathe,” you said through a yawn. Pero shook his head.

“I will. You stay here.” You were too sated to argue.

You must have briefly fallen asleep because the next thing you knew Pero was gently shaking you awake. You could smell wood ash from the bar of soap and rose petals first, and then you felt the ache in your arms where they had been pulled behind you and the pleasant throbbing between your legs.

“The water is ready,” he whispered, laying a soft kiss on your forehead. 

As he helped you up off the bed, you felt your combined juices leaking out of you, dripping down the backs of your thighs. 

He guided you into the tub, the water slightly warm and you realised you must have slept longer than you thought for him to have warmed up some of the water on the stove downstairs. 

As you lay back, head resting on the edge and legs spread out to accommodate Pero’s body in front of you, you realised just how lucky you were. You remembered when your mother was ill, too ill to leave her bed, the one you slept in now, and seeing your father washing her hands with a bowl of water and piece of rag. How softly he had wiped at her delicate skin, how quietly he had collected the water with the rag because the slightest noise made her wince.

You didn’t realise how rare affection like that was from a man until later in life, when you took more notice of the married men who came into the tavern, moaning about their wives, laughing at how they had raised their hands to them in anger. 

Pero’s rough hands delicately rubbed at the insides of you ankles where they rested at his side. It wasn’t a large tub, the two of you were squeezed together, but you had never felt more comfortable.

You tilted his head back, cupped a handful of water and ran your fingers through his hair, wetting it as you did. The sensations made Pero visibly relax; his shoulders loosened up, his breathing steadied to the point you thought he had fallen asleep. 

He leaned into you as you washed his hair with soap and water. You caught him up on everything that had happened whilst he was away. He listened as he always listened to you: humming in acknowledgment, nodding here and there, uninterrupted. 

You moved from his hair to his shoulders, soothing his aching bones with your fingers and kissing his bruised skin. You inspected him for any fresh cuts or wounds but saw none, so you were confident he hadn’t seen any fighting. The possibility always worried you because he would never tell you, knew how much you would fret and fuss him when he returned. 

When you had finished washing him, Pero stood up and switched places with you to return the gesture, beginning with your hair. 

He told you a little about where he had been, as he usually did. He wasn’t being secretive, he simply didn’t find himself as interesting to listen to. He thought his stories paled in comparison to yours. You laughed when he had first told you that. The idea that going to market was a more interesting adventure than sailing the seas made you scoff. But in reality it was less about the story and more about who was telling it.

He loved your voice, how soft it became when you spoke of your girls, how croaky it became when you were telling him something that upset you, or how heated and loud it sounded when something had made you angry. 

He couldn’t get enough of listening to you talk about your work. When you mentioned things he barely had an understanding of, when you read words he couldn’t, spoke so fast he couldn’t keep up, he was in complete awe of you. He could listen to you, and only you, for the rest of his life. 

And you never made him feel embarrassed when he didn’t understand something, or when he couldn’t quite grasp a word in English. You were patient when so many others had brushed him off as being not worth their time. And for that he would give you the world if he could. 

After washing you, he pulled you back to rest your head on his shoulder. 

“I have given some coins to Addy to add to your pouch of earnings.” Of course Pero had waited until you were completely relaxed to tell you. You frowned and huffed in annoyance.

He left kisses along your neck to distract you. Suddenly you had an image of a pile of coins in the middle of your bed a few months ago. You felt stupid for not realising it sooner. Who else could have helped you? There was no one else who cared for you enough to give up their hard earned coin to save your tavern.

You leaned away so you could look into his eyes. He was just as stubborn as you, so you wondered whether he would ever admit it without you bringing it up.

“It was you.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. You would bet your tavern on it.

“Me?” He asked innocently. If he knew what you were referring to, he was hiding it very well.

“You left the coins on my bed, when I nearly lost the tavern to the taxman.” You glared at him, daring him to deny it. He set his jaw and after a moment, looking away from you in defeat. 

You smirked, pouncing forward to kiss at his neck.

“Took you long enough, _mi amor_ ,” he huffed, but it was lighthearted. You chuckled at your Spaniard. 

It hit you then that this man really loved you. And you thought how many more things he did and never told you about. You wanted to know everything, you wanted to thank him for every small thing he did to make you happy and safe, the little things that made your life easier or your work less stressful that you would never know he did for you. You wondered why he didn’t tell you.

“Why the secrecy?”

He shrugged, his arms going around your waist as you moved onto your side to rest your head against his chest. He sighed in content.

“I had known you only a few days. I did not want to overwhelm you.”

“Overwhelm me?” You shook your head, thinking about that first week of meeting Pero. You were already so in love with him by the end of that week. “Foolish man,” you mumbled, and you squealed as his finger dug into the ticklish skin of your ribs. 

“I wanted to stay,” he confided in you. It was rare that you heard him so sincere. “And I did not want that to be the thing that scared you away.”

“I would have kissed you a lot more if I had known it was you.”

“Damned to hell,” he growled and you chuckled, the breath hitting his chest. 

The water had turned cold long ago but you found yourself not caring. You would be content to stay here all night. 

“Thank you Pero.”

-

“Nothing is ever tedious when I am doing it with you.”

That was Pero’s response when you had asked him if he minded doing tedious work around the tavern. 

You had awoken early to get a head start on the cleaning. Now the warmer weather was on its way, the Spring sunshine would stream in through the windows of the tavern and illuminate any dust residing on the furniture. So you wanted to spend the extra time making sure not a single speck of dirt had been missed.

Pero had decided to follow you down to the tavern to help you, despite your insistence that you could get the girls to help whilst he rested. Although you would never say no to spending time with him, even if you were working or not saying much at all, just having him in the same room as you was distracting. 

You watched the muscles in his back rippling underneath his dark tunic as he scrubbed at the dirt around the fireplace. That was when you decided that if you weren’t personally going to get much work done, then the least you could do was strike up a conversation. 

“As much as I adore that answer Pero, I do not believe you could do this for the rest of your life.” 

You leant against the countertop, rag in hand, absentmindedly rubbing over the same stain that had been there for years. 

Pero turned to look at you, a smidge of black ash had found its way onto his chin and you held yourself back from running over there and wiping it off for him. 

“What do you mean by that?” You shrugged, looking away from him. 

“What are your plans exactly?” You were done with being cautious when it came to your relationship. He had promised that you would have this conversation when he came back, and that had been three days ago. He had made no attempts to talk about this with you, you doubted he ever would without being prompted. 

“Plans?”

“With us.” You motioned between the two of you, leaving him in no doubt about what you meant. 

You heard him sigh and you looked up to see he had turned away to continue his cleaning. 

“I am not being unreasonable, Pero. I would like to know what the future looks like for you.”

It was that nagging devil on your shoulder again that wouldn’t let this go. That little voice that haunted you, usually at night when Pero was off making coin and you only had yourself for company, in a bed that was too big and too cold for just you. 

Pero gave you everything and yet nothing at the same time. He showed his love for you through actions, that was his way, but now you needed words, to put the devil to bed once and for all. 

“I do not often look to the future, mi amor,” he replied. Frustrated at his lack of response you threw the rag onto the countertop and made your way over to where he was still furiously brushing at the brickwork. 

“I understand when you were a mercenary you must not have had much hope of a future.” He paused when you leaned back against the wall next to him. He kept his eyes on the brush in his hand. “But things are different now, are they not?”

Your heart was beating wildly in your chest. You were trying to make your voice strong, let him know that you were not backing down from the conversation that needed to be had. 

But you knew his temper. It had never been directed at you, but if he didn’t want to answer your questions he would huff and walk out the door and there would be nothing you could do to stop him. 

“If I did look to my future, all I saw was death. Not this.” He pushed himself away from the fireplace and strode over to where you had been previously, mirroring your position against the countertop, arms crossed and facing you. 

He sighed heavily, taking a moment to formulate the words in his mind before he said them out loud. 

“I never thought anyone could love me the way I am.” He sounded steady, in control, but you knew him better than that. His hands were turned to fists; not anger but an attempt to ground himself and remember where he was. He kept swallowing the lump that was daring to climb up his throat; he wasn’t used to being so honest and raw with his emotions. He still refused to meet your eyes, out of embarrassment and fear that you would reject his words. 

“I am rough and harsh. I speak better with my fists and my weapons than I do with my mouth. That has only ever kept people away from me. So I could never imagine somebody wanting to be around me. Or want me in their life or in their bed more than once. You I never saw.”

You forced yourself to keep quiet and listen. You yearned to wrap your arms around him and tell him how sorry you were that nobody had wanted to see beyond the surface of him. You wanted to find every man and woman that had ever crossed paths with him and shake them and scream and tell them how stupid they were that they had let one of one of the softest, kindest, most special men they may ever meet slip through their fingers. 

“I do not know how to do this.” You could have sworn you felt your heart stop. You had wanted to talk about this because you hoped for closure, for reassurance that things were great between the two of you. Now you were suddenly realising this may not go the way you had hoped.

“I do not know how to love how a husband does. I have no idea how to provide for another when all I have ever done is provide for myself.” 

You watched as he seemed to sink further against the countertop, his shoulders sagging as though the act of confessing to you was exhausting him. He looked tired from the effort and you decided you couldn’t hold back any longer.

Your footsteps were soft so as not to startle him. Taking his hands, you uncurled them from fists in order to link your fingers together.

“I am not asking for you to be perfect. I am not even asking for you to be my husband. All I am asking is that you trust me. If you are doing anything wrong, then trust that I will tell you. If you are not showing me the love I need, then trust that I will let you know and not cast you out at the first sign of discontent. Trust that I want you here just as much as you want to be here.” 

Pero let out a sob, the last of his defences breaking down in front of you. You pulled his head into the crook of your shoulder, your hands going up around his shoulders to hold him as he shook. 

You stood there for what felt like hours, but was most likely only a moment, waiting for Pero to let out everything he had been holding in. 

When he started to pull back, you brought your hands up to rest on either side of his face. Your thumbs brushed away any remaining tears on his cheeks as he pressed his forehead to yours.

“I want to try, for you. _Mi amor_ I am tired of being alone,” he whispered into the limited space between you. 

“I promise you, mi amor, that as long as my heart is beating in this world, I will be here with you.” He smiled when you used his term of endearment, and you would say it a lot more if it meant seeing his face light up that way every time. 

He pressed a chaste kiss to your lips, an unspoken ‘thank you’, but you understood. 

He pulled back, placing his hands on your waist to keep you close to him. Your hands moved down to rest against his chest, your thumb rubbing against the sliver of bare chest that the v in his tunic showed off. 

“I love you.” It was the first time you had said it that way. You had often said the word whilst complimenting him (“ _I love the look of your scar_ ,” and “ _I love the way you say my name_ ”), but not with the same weight that ’I love you’ holds. But before he could react to it you carried on speaking. “And if it means putting up with you leaving for weeks at a time so you can earn the coin you want, then I am willing to compromise for the sake of us.”

If it meant not losing him, not pushing him away, now that you know that he loves you even if he cannot say it, then you were willing to let him go sometimes, because no devil on your shoulder could ever convince you that he wouldn’t always come running back to you. 

But Pero was shaking his head. “I will find something in town. Whatever it is I will do it. I hate leaving you for so long. I know very little but my leaving every few months will only keep hurting us and that is not how love should be.”

You breathed a sigh of relief. “There is no rush. There is plenty to do in the tavern.” 

“ _Sí, querida,_ I am sure you will keep me busy for the rest of my life.” You laughed, the tension having dissipated with his cheeky remark. 

“Starting with finishing the cleaning before Darcy finds us and tells us off.” 

-

You had never expected it to happen whilst you were lying in bed waiting for Pero to finish washing his face. You definitely didn’t expect it to happen after your conversation the week before in the tavern. You had made it clear that you didn’t expect anything from him. Only that he always came back to you. 

“I want to marry you.” He had to repeat himself because you hadn’t responded. When he looked over to you, you were clearly confused, looking at him as though he had sprouted a second head.

“I- why?” 

He guffawed, not put off by your lack of an answer. He was grateful you hadn’t turned him down completely. Maybe you just needed a little persuading. 

“Because I love you, mi querida, and I want to make an honest man of you.” He dropped the piece of cloth into the basin of water and slipped into the bed next to you. 

“Really?” You weren’t sure what you were finding so hard to grasp,. That Pero, the man that until a few days before was still unsure whether he could “love you how a husband” should, was asking you to marry him, or that you had everything you never thought you would have and a small part of you thought that maybe everything in your life since meeting Pero was a sick dream that you would inevitably wake up from. 

“Really,” he insisted, placing a hand on your cheek to turn you towards him. “I have been afraid that I would never live up to what you deserve. And that meant I was wasting time.” He placed his hand in yours, bringing it up to place small kisses on the knuckles. “I don’t want to waste any more time when I could marry you and have anything you are willing to give me.” 

You felt the tears running down your face and realised you were crying. “I would love to marry you, Pero.” 

You never knew Pero could smile so widely. You wished you could paint his smile to carry around with you forever, it was so beautiful. You couldn’t admire it for as long as you wanted because Pero launched forward to kiss you passionately. 

Your hands reached up to run through his hair, tugging softly as you felt a need to pull him even closer to you.

He pulled back from you, gulping for air as he began to loosen the ribbon that held your hair together.

“Anyway I am getting old so I will need someone to care for me.” You punched him playfully in the arm, only a little annoyed that he had ruined the moment. He kissed you again, short and sweet, as his hands moved to hold your face close to him. 

“I promise to give you everything you ask for. Anything you need that you cannot provide for yourself, I will do it.” He was under no illusion that you needed him. You had looked after yourself and the girls before he arrived and could do so if you asked him to leave. “Whether that is fixing a broken table or giving you children.”

Pero was offering you the world. You wanted to fall into his arms at the end of the day, everyday. You wanted to watch the sun rise every morning with him lying next to you. Everything else was irrelevant. 

You had only recently started thinking about children, you weren’t sure if it was something Pero desired. But now he was giving you the option, if you did or if you didn’t. And you realised it wasn’t just that he was offering you anything you wanted, it was that with him by your side, you could do anything, together, side by side. You could do so much more as husband and wife than you could on your own. 

“ _Te amo, mi querida._ ”

“I love you too, Pero.“

You would be unstoppable. And you couldn’t wait to start the next adventure with him.


End file.
